About three years ago, in a bid to help me trace my ancestry, my father took me to the Free State town of Qwa-Qwa on the Lesotho border.
It was part of the process of welcoming me into his family. It began about a week earlier at sunset on a Friday.
My old man spilled the blood of a few beasts and performed several rituals to appease his ancestors.
We rose at the crack of dawn the next morning and travelled to the nearby cemetery of Croeses for an introduction to my great-grandmother and my grandfather.
”Here is your son,” my old man said in Sesotho as we knelt next to my great-grandmother’s grave before moving to my grandfather’s.
Now in the Free State, my father was looking a little anxious as we drove on a pothole-infested road towards a little farmhouse. We would be arriving unannounced and would have to seek permission from the owner of the farm.
This permission would allow us to kneel at the graveside of Douglas Alcock, my great-grandfather, and my father to say once more, this time in English: ”Here is your son.”
The right to visit relatives’ graves guarantees a very emotional journey for many South Africans. But this week two families found out they will never make that journey again. The Gadzayi and Theletsane families had graves destroyed by farmers in order to make way for cabbages and carrots, respectively.
The farmer apologised to the Theletsanes, saying that he was merely ”cleaning” his farm. The cabbage farmer denied he had ”flattened” the grave of seven-year-old Bongani.
Towards the end of last month another couple in the Free State town of Koppies were forced to exhume the body of their child by a farmer who was enraged after they quit working for him. The farmer drove the family to Tshwane with the body. The couple were then arrested for digging up a corpse, but later released after the Human Rights Commission intervened.
The sad reality is that the two incidents are not isolated. In the Northern Cape a couple of years back a community near Douglas laid criminal charges after a small-scale miner dug up graves in his quest for diamonds alongside the Vaal River.
Land-rights activists say the destruction of graves is common as farmers or landowners clear them for farming or development.
The issue is complicated by the mistrust created by restitution, says Teresa Yates of the Nkuzi Development Association. She says that farmers initially agree to allow visiting families onto their farms and then ”become difficult”.
Yates believes that there has been no real change for such people, who are already on the fringes of South African society. ”As in life — in death they are powerless,” she says.
Stories abound in agricultural circles that before land claims were lodged in 1998 farmers got rid of every rock on their farms that resembled a gravestone. This was because graves can be used as evidence to support a restitution claim. Some say the practice still continues.
Annelize Crosby, land-policy adviser for farmers’ union AgriSA, says: ”We normally advise farmers to allow families to visit.” She adds that the union is guided by the Extension of Security of Tenure Act, which decrees that farm owners should allow families to pay their respects at graves on their farmland.
The legislation, however, allows the owner to set conditions for visits and has been harshly criticised in land circles for its lack of teeth.
AgriSA and other farmers’ unions say that farm murders have made it impossible for farmers to allow free access to visit graves.
Additional reporting by Yolandi Groenewald