Loosely translated, the above headline means “I shall set Gerrie Nel on you”.
Never mind the emotion-charged rhetoric about race and whipped up emotions with regards to the threatened expropriation of land without compensation, the townships and, perhaps even villages, have their own unique narrative.
For some reason, when Nel hauled Oscar Pistorious over the coals, the trial was the most talked-about in black areas, comparable to, say, the shenanigans around Jacob Zuma.
Now intentionally or otherwise, the Afrikaans lobby collective, AfriForum, has apparently hit the right note by unleashing Nel onto the likes of Duduzane Zuma.
The vibe in my circles of pretenders to aristocracy, often in jest, is that you cross paths with a township klevah (streetwise) then Bulldog (Nel) — and by implication AfriForum — shall be knocking at the door.
With this in mind, the national psyche around issues of race and politics is not as straightforward as politicians and analysts want us to believe.
This means that by pursuing those who enrich themselves with what belongs to the poor, AfriForum re-positions itself not only as a leader of modern-day Afrikaner nationalism, but also fills a gap whereby the poor have no power to demand back what they think belong to them.
But there is another interesting narrative in the background.
This brings us to a gentleman named Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota.
In recent weeks Lekota, the leader of the Congress of the People (Cope), has come across as someone who sings from the same hymnbook with white (perhaps even black) landowners.
The former Robben Island prisoner has dared the land-grab demagogues that farmers — black and white — did not steal land from anybody, but invested money into acquiring it.
This hits me between the eyes because in recent weeks I was shocked to find relatives selling pieces of the Masilela smallholding to the homeless in the communal farmlands of Klippan outside Pretoria.
This is the very land whereby during my boyhood, I used to follow grandfather, Oupa John Masilela, hunched behind a hand plough drawn by a herd of oxen.
Dare I say I even sat next to my grandfather when — by ox-wagon — we transported bagsful of maize and ground-nuts for battering at the white man’s trading store at a tranquil place called Soutpan?
Perhaps I should consider setting Gerrie Nel — and by extension AfriForum — on my mischievous relatives for giving away grandfather’s precious land.
