Bongani Hlatshwayo: activist for vulnerable farm dwellers

To stay safe and survive to see another day, Bongani Hlatshwayo, 56, leader of the SA Workers and Labour Tenants Association in Piet Retief in Mpumalanga, has at times had to disguise himself as a woman or old man.

Born in Zola, Soweto, he left the then Transvaal when he was three years old with his family and completed his standard 9 (Grade 11) at Mkhomazi Secondary School in Breyten, KwaZanele location in Mpumalanga in 1981.

He had to drop out of school due financial troubles and took a job as a clerk at a colliery mine, which did not last as he was retrenched three years later.

“This is where the activist in me kicked in because during that time I was very active in union politics and in 1984 I was involved in ANC underground structures, so activism is in my being,” Hlatshwayo said.

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As an activist of social justice and rights of black farm dwellers and workers, the diminutive and deeply caring old man is also a very brave and outspoken in an area tense with racial, labour and land disputes.

In his crusade to defend the rights and seek justice for killed, tortured, evicted and abused farm dwellers and workers, Hlatshwayo said he had clashed with many white farmers in the area.

For fear of his life and safety of his family, Hlatshwayo will not reveal where he stays with his wife of 37 years and some of his seven grandchildren. He has received many death threats, mainly from white farmers and black farm managers but said thankfully he has not yet been hurt.

The activist has been threatened with legal action and barred from setting foot on some of the farms where he had intervened in disputes.

“I take the threats very serious. I carry disguises, including women’s clothes, in my bag into which I change when I get to a meeting so I will come in as a man, and leave as a woman,” Hlatshwayo said.

“Piet Retief is a country on its own where black farm dwellers and workers can just be assaulted, tortured and evicted and even murdered and there will be no evidence against the perpetrators. When the accused is a black farm dweller, they are thieves and farm murders,” he said.

As the organiser of the association, Hlatshwayo criss-crosses the entire area of Mkhondo, using the little that he has and lifts on the roads to get to victimised farm workers and dwellers to intervene on their behalf.

He has seen black people living in squalor without running water or electricity and in ramshackle compounds while white farmers lived in comfort and luxury in most farming communities.

“That is not fair. Black people are also victims of the farm attacks and livestock theft that the farmers are complaining about, but instead of finding solutions, they accuse and target their black farm dwellers, kick them off their land and shoot them,” Hlatshwayo said.

He played a key role in the arrest of the alleged murders of the Coka brothers Mgcini, 36, and Zenzele, 39, in Pampoenkraal on 9 April following a violent confrontation, and was also central in the re-arrest of three of the suspects arrested in the Coka brothers case for another double murder in August the previous year.

Cousins Musa Nene, 34, and Sifiso Thwala, 39, were beaten to death, with the latter’s brother, Sthembiso, 32, barely surviving to tell the grisly tale.

“These two cases would not have gone anywhere if it were not for the media. Farmers just shoot and concoct a story of self defence and pay their way out. They collude with police, black farm workers and prosecutors,” he said.

The organisation he works for was founded by Nhlanhla Mthabela as Shishiliza Farm Workers Association, but changed its name to accommodate the cultural diversity.

It operates in mainly rural districts of Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and in the Free State, facilitating empowerment and basic services for rural dwellers and fighting off illegal farm evictions.

“Basically we are doing what government is supposed to be doing through the Extension of the Security of Tenure Act, Labour Tenant Act and Labour Relations Act in terms of issues like minimum wage. People have to know their rights and justice, but government has been indifferent to the horrors of people in rural areas, the most downtrodden and abused,” he said.

siphom@citizen.co.za