This informative and thoughtful guest post is from by 2L Dr. Jennifer Howard Szakaly.
Perhaps it’s a strange thing for a mother of four and family dentist, to take up a cause on another continent – and a cause not about dentistry, but rather about family and farming. It makes more sense, however, if you knew that I’m a dentist in one of the most wonderful farming communities in Virginia. And, through one of my farming patients, I was lead to an International Facebook Community for Women in Agriculture. What began as an occasional post from a South African farmer on the community page calling for prayers, eventually broke into a wave of additional posts about South African Farmers murdered at the hands of what they claimed to be racist extremists. Stories of rape, torture and mutilation of children; a world far contrasting my quiet community.
The farmers of South Africa did appear to share the qualities of the farmers in my community. Farmers rely on the land and are often generationally invested. They are the people who through tremendous personal sacrifice, dirt under their nails, holes in their jeans and the toll of the sun on their faces, feed a nation. Some explained the murders as robberies gone wrong, but the facts told a different story. Days of torture as well as the targets of the crimes, diminish this explanation; targeting poor farmers in robberies certainly will not be productive, and torturing and murdering infant children certainly is not inherent to theft.
Most nations recognize their dependence on those who forage animals and plants possessing generations of unwritten wisdom farming families pass from one generation to the next. The South African Parliament, however, has unanimously voted to expel by force any white farmer from land that has been in families for generations. If there was a question of whether these horrific acts have been racially motivated, the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa made it clear in his address following the vote, violent disposal of white farmers may be an option and white farmers will not be compensated for the government seizure. This pronouncement effectively made racial persecution nationally recognized and state sanctioned. These farmers and their families, now the target of open political persecution in South Africa, have been subjected to violent rape torture and murders for a decade and now attacks are averaging one family per day. Some claim that this is redress for a historical wrong. Justice, however, cannot possibly come from these atrocities, and a nation cannot be healed by stabbing its families in the heart.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Andre VanZyl, a white South African farmer who has farmed on her father’s family farm her entire adult life. She tells me that much like the settlement of the American West, generations ago families who were skilled in farming sought to claim undeveloped unoccupied land. No battles were waged over the land, no settlements were uprooted. They simply created a homestead from a vast span of opportunity. These farmers today in South Africa are similar; not oppressors, not individuals without blisters on their hands and sore backs. Andre tells me of her neighbor who was killed “three Sundays ago” and another a few years ago, and yet another that was shot but survived. “All within a 20-mile radius.” I look at her profile picture and there she is standing beside a large trademark green John Deere Tractor with her husband beside her. I then turn to her posts, threaded with faith in a God “who is a God of order, love and respect for others.” She has no idea how this situation will resolve for her family, but her faith is not lost. Other nations are offering solutions to rescue these families.
South Africa is a nation deeply rooted in Christianity. I cannot help but think of Dr. King’s letters from a Birmingham jail, where he cries foul at the hypocrisy of Church leaders failing to take a stand against racial, human, injustice. Let us learn and grow from history, let us not repeat the mistakes of our father’s father. Targeting the weak, the unsupported, and those without the resources to flee the wheel of torture is genocide.
We need farming families. We need their unique skill set and unmatched work ethic. We need those committed to feed a nation. For now, I pray for them and with all of the oppressed and their oppressors to find the power of love. I also pray that someone with power and means, beyond those I find at my disposal, could pool resources to offer opportunity for these farmers who are in high demand and short supply here, in this great country, where we respect and honor those who feed our nation.
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