This article was sent to me for publication and was said to be written by Ronel Pretorius, a lady living now in Auckland, New Zealand, who left South Africa in January 2007 when she was 29. However, the same article appeared in the same publication as Ronel’s a year later under a different title and a different author (Bronwyn Minnie who says she is 32 and lives in South Africa. She says she “grew up on farms, loves animals and started writing when she was 14”). This article has also appeared in two other online publications with no author’s name appended. I make no apology for republishing it here on iNews Cayman and I let you judge its authenticity.

In 1986 my parents moved us to a farm just outside of a small little God forsaken town, about 60 kilometers outside of Johannesburg called, Delmas. As a young child, I had grown up with the apartheid era, and being white in those days had put you automatically on the “good” side of the fence.

As a child of 10, racism and apartheid had no meaning to me. We had a good life. We had enough money to live. We could play outside until late; sometimes our parents didn’t even know what we were up to, or where we were doing it. As long as we were home by the time it got dark, they were not worried about us.

The maid, who worked in the house, looked after us during the day, because my parents had to work. The gardener was also semi-in charge of us kids. My parents had brought us up to be strong people, to back up what we believe in, and had taught us that no human being is greater than another.

The house we moved into was a huge old farmhouse. It had no security, no burglar bars, and certainly no alarm system. Everybody had a dog or two, especially when you had the space to keep them. So we grew up with Rottweiler’s and ducks in the back yard.

All the time we had black people in and around our house. Either working in the house, garden or for the business my parents had started there. We employed more than 60 people at one time. Some of the people that worked for my parents prior to the moving were still with us when we decided to start a new life. Those people are like family and have been around much longer than most of my parents’ friends.

As the years progressed, the house received somewhat of a makeover. Bare windows were closed up with burglar bars, because of an attempted break in of what we had concluded to be a bunch of kids fooling around. Then, came 1993-1994. The big revolution had been flung into action. As a child, I didn’t even know about the riots and the bombings, until my mother and brother narrowly escaped death at a restaurant bombing in Benoni, a town much closer to Johannesburg. They had been into a fast food restaurant. My mom had bought them some lunch, and they had just sat down, when she caught a glimpse of a black man, sitting very uneasy at a table in the middle of the restaurant. He had no food with him, and he was clearly on edge. Thank God, my mother had the sense to listen to her instincts, and grabbed my brother up, and left. As they got to the car, they heard a loud BANG! The restaurant had gone up in flames, and people all around, black and white were yelling and screaming. That was the day I realised that things aren’t just as nice as they seem.

As the years grew on, apartheid became a thing of the past. I can still remember watching Mr. Mandela getting out of jail, the inauguration and his first day in parliament. We were all stuck to the television, waiting for the end of the world to strike at any moment. Suddenly, every white person had become the anti-Christ! Even little children, who didn’t even know how to tie their shoelaces, were blamed for the horrible things our so-called “leaders” of the day had implemented. Luckily for us, Mr. Mandela is a wonderful person. He had not once taken the stance of tyrant, and had treated each and every person as an equal individual. Black, white, coloureds and Indians, alike. We were all just people to him, and I’m sure that is true to this day.

Back on the farm, things had changed even more. Electrical gates were put up, and a six-foot monster of a fence had replaced the stringy little fence that stood there for years. People were cutting up the fences to get into the yard, so they could steal the electrical wiring we used inside the greenhouses for lighting. So, later, up came the electrical fence! But before that, a real break in. Money stolen, straight out of the vault, with no effort, no cutting machines, they knew exactly where the keys were, and the safe. Only money was stolen. That same day the maid had wanted to know from my mother if I would be home that night, or if I would be going out with my friends. The maid was the culprit, and her boyfriend, who had masterminded the whole thing. He was in the Police Service, and even “investigated the case”. So there goes your trust in humanity, right out the window!

The maid was fired, a security system was put in, and everything was now locked at night. My parents had also put a slide security gate in the house, to section off the house from the bedrooms, and that was locked too. So here we are in our huge old farmhouse, trapped like rats in a cage! Lovely!

And what is happening now? Black people are being discriminated on by black people. Whites by whites. It’s an endless vicious circle, and all the while, the word ‘racism’ is swung around like a toy in the air. Friends have been hi-jacked, assaulted, stolen from, shot and killed. Not just because someone else is hungry and needs the money, but because they are white, they owe the world. One farmer in the community had been terrorised by the people living in the townships, because he refused to sell his land to the municipality for more housing. He was tortured, his children tortured and beaten. He had been shot in the face and left to die, and with only the grace of God still lives.

For the people living in the townships the story is the same, except, they don’t have police protection. Justice is left up to the people. They cannot go out of their houses when the sun goes down. Their children are being raped and abused by “Tsotsi’s” while they are at work. There is no difference in treatment for white or black people.

How safe is it to live in South Africa? It’s not.