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5
May 2018
TRANSFORMATION
is a change of heart
a
midst the turning of the season I am also aware
of a change of season in the people in our coun-
try. Some are positive – as if spring is in the air
with new growth and new hope – but some are also au-
tumn and winterish, with drying leaves and cold winds
blowing.
The new president of the country has appointed a few new (or
is it old?) ministers, who have started spring cleaning! New boards
are being appointed and old political appointees are being replaced
and some are even prosecuted. This is all positive, but I trust that
the new seedlings will in this regard yield good returns.
Grain SA is playing the role of rendering support in this rebuilding
and restoration. I was also heartened by the efforts of individu-
als to take the unity in agriculture forward. However, it is a steep
road, but we know it well. The mountain-top experience of such a
long, uphill battle is what we live and work for.
Some of the obstacles in this uphill battle comprise of individu-
als who make it their life’s work to oppose all progress. If they
cannot take all credit for themselves, they oppose everything.
That is a pity. Something heavily burdening my heart is the is-
sue of transformation. I read with great interest Max du Preez’s
interpretation of why racial discrimination in theory, can only flow
from white to black and not the other way around.
It provides good insight, but it does not mean that I understand
everything or that I am in agreement with it. Nevertheless, I did
gain a better insight. We spend hours in meetings and planning ses-
sions on how to address transformation. It is, however, always one
sided: From white to black.
The past month I attended various meetings during which the
idea of reverse transformation came to mind. Maybe it was
Mr Mosiuoa Lekota asking in Parliament who the ‘our people’ so
often referred to, were, that sparked it.
Am I not also ‘our people’, I started thinking to myself? My ances-
tors fled France in 1688 because of their religion and came to settle
here in South Africa. We came to farm and to evangelise. If I think
about it carefully, it is still the same today. Yet, there are still fellow
citizens who do not want to transform and accept me as a fellow
African. I have crossed the river and accepted them as fellow citi-
zens, but I am still not accepted by many.
Grain SA still has a long way to go to transform completely, but
also to play a role in helping all of society to transform. Permanent
transformation is a change of heart. It is not the completion of a
few projects – and hey presto! Similarly, people’s dignity is not re-
stored by simply giving them a piece of land (with or without com-
pensation).
Those who have received farms without title deeds from the
state, do not succeed in farming and have definitely not been ac-
corded dignity while being labelled as ‘failed farmers’. Land reform
therefore, entails a whole lot more than just handing out land.
We have witnessed a higher level of dignity in those farmers who
have harvested their own commercial yield on 1 ha of land. They
can care for themselves and also for their families. Therein resides
human dignity. Government employees who do not want to attend
to a person just because of his/her skin colour, have not earned their
own dignity and are not promoting transformation.
Yet we still believe that winter will pass at a certain stage and
when spring comes, we can once again plant and harvest to make
headway.