Unearthing the secrets of KwaZulu-Natal's farm of horrors

Shocking details of abuse and brutality have emerged in the wake of the discovery of a "mass grave" on a KwaZulu-Natal farm.

Former workers from the South Coast farm say that in the years before prison labour was banned in the '80s, convicts who worked there were forced to wear old sacks and were beaten for no reason.

"Those who died were buried like dogs in that place," one former labourer, Willie Ndlovu, told the Sunday Times this week.

"There are many prisoners who died there. Once a prisoner had died, the workers would just dig a hole and bury them in an unmarked grave. We called the place where they were buried ezintandaneni [the place of orphans]."

Police have cordoned off the site on Glenroy Farm where as many as 100 bodies could be buried.

Premier Senzo Mchunu and his provincial cabinet issued a statement a week ago about the existence of a "mass grave", saying the farm had been known for its use of prison labour.

The statement gave few details, and a veil of secrecy has been thrown over the discovery, but former workers have told of how prisoners were badly abused by farm foremen at the owner's behest.

At the time of the alleged abuse, the farm was owned by Walter William Lindsay, who died in 1985 at the age of 81.

A multi-agency team involving the National Prosecuting Authority, the Department of Home Affairs and forensic investigators would be set up to investigate and identify the bodies, Mchunu's statement said.

Prison Labour

The use of prison labour was for a long time common practice in South Africa, with the earliest records of it going back to the 1800s.

Questions have been raised over whether the bodies really are those of prison labourers, but several people who worked for Lindsay have no doubt that they are.

Ndlovu said he had witnessed prisoners being "sjambokked by izinduna [foremen]" during the six years that he worked there during the '60s.

Ndlovu's recollections are backed up by other workers and families in Dududu, where the farm is situated.

"Most of them died as a result of the injuries sustained from being severely beaten. I do not remember anyone who died because they were sick," said Ndlovu, now in his 70s.

He said the conditions under which the prisoners worked were so brutal that some escaped from the farm and ran away.

While the regular labourers also did not escape the wrath of the izinduna, it was the prisoners who bore the brunt of their aggression, he said.

He said prisoners were beaten at the slightest provocation and for being "lazy".

The prisoners had to wear old sacks when they arrived at the farm, which made them easily identifiable.

Cruel Conditions

Bhekinkosi Myeza, 70, whose father worked at the farm, said he was "not surprised" by the reports of a mass grave.

As a young man, said Myeza, he used to do piecemeal jobs at the farm and had witnessed the abuse of workers and prisoners.

"I am not surprised because of the bad way that my parents were treated on that farm," he said.

"My family was evicted from their land by Lindsay and my brother's grave was desecrated within a week or two of his burial, when the land on which he was buried was ploughed for sugar cane."

Another former labourer, Thembinkosi Ngcobo, 61, who worked on the farm for 10 years, yesterday described the conditions as "very cruel" and "horrible".

He said prisoners who were sick were not taken to the clinic for medication but would be left to die on the farm.

"Prisoners would be beaten with a sjambok or even a stick. There was one notorious foreman who used to beat the hell out of the prisoners," he said.

Ngcobo said that if a prisoner died, the farm owners would just dig a hole with a tractor and bury him. Sometimes two people would be buried together.

He also revealed that there was just not one site where prisoners were buried on the farm. The other burial ground was near the main farmhouse, he said.

"There are too many people who died while I was working there. I can't even count them," he said.

Ngcobo said all workers on the farm were liable to be beaten. "The labourers were also beaten up if they showed any sign of fatigue. You would even be beaten for taking a smoke break. I was also beaten," he said.

"He [the farm owner] was an evil man.

"We worked as slaves and even the food we ate was not worth eating," Ngcobo said.

He said Lindsay cared so little for his staff that he would grind mealie cobs in with the kernels when making mealiemeal for them.

"We would just eat it like that and sometimes we would down maize meal pap with amahewu [fermented liquid mealiemeal porridge]. He was evil," Ngcobo said.

The 1700ha farm is now owned by Illovo Sugar, which bought it from the Lindsay family in 1989. Forensic experts from Pretoria arrived on the farm this week.

Local chief Mjokwane Mqadi held an urgent meeting with his traditional council and representatives of the Vulamehlo municipality, under which Dududu falls, on Thursday to discuss the issue.

Mqadi, 52, said he remembered as a child in the late '60s seeing prisoners being brought to the farm.

"They would come past our house. My parents told me that some were brought to the farm from the Eastern Cape. They told me that the prisoners were being badly treated and they suffered unimaginable terror," he said.

The site of the suspected mass grave is less than a kilometre from the main farmhouse and its outbuildings. It is surrounded by a swathe of sugar cane.

Kind Man

Lindsay's oldest living relative, his grandson Gary Lindsay, refused to talk to the Sunday Times, referring the newspaper to a lawyer.

But on Wednesday, he told The Witness that his grandfather had been a kind man who was a well-respected member of the community.

"There was a gravesite on the farm, but it was never a secret, everyone knew where it was," the newspaper quoted Lindsay as saying.

"As children, the place was off-limits to us and I am not sure if it was where the prisoners were buried or just people who lived nearby."

He said the prison labourers on the farm had been petty criminals. "From what I can recall, they were guys who had been caught without a dompas or who were drunk in public, and then they were sent to work on our farm for a week and then taken back to the prison."

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Lindsay's attorney, Colyn Townsend, said there was not enough information to prove that the bodies had been buried there at the time the Lindsay family owned the farm, or even that they belonged to prison labourers.

"I'm very interested to see the forensic results to see how they died ... when they died, who they are, et cetera," he said. "As far as [Lindsay] is aware, no prisoners ever died on the farm."

Questions have also been raised as to why provincial authorities revealed the information now - apparently five months after a sangoma told the authorities she had had a vision of "restless spirits" buried on the farm.

Illovo Sugar spokesman Chris FitzGerald said the company had no idea of the grave's existence until December, when it had been alerted by the provincial government.

'Bodies may belong to victims of conflict'

Researcher Mary de Haas is not entirely convinced the remains in the "mass grave" on Glenroy Farm belong to prison labourers.

De Haas, who specialises in political violence research, said this week that it was possible the bodies belonged to victims of political clashes in the area. It was only once the bodies had been identified, she said, that the truth would come out.

She said she was particularly concerned by the cloak of secrecy and the mysterious involvement of a sangoma in the discovery of the gravesite - and the role of premier Senzo Mchunu's office.

"Has the government verified how many bodies there are, or are they going by what the sangoma said? The bodies need to be properly exhumed. We have experts in exhumation. You can't just do DNA tests. You have to make sure the bodies don't get mixed up.

"There was a lot of political violence in Dududu. But until you know when those bodies were buried there, there will be questions. Were they buried when there was a prison farm there? First, the age of the remains needs to be established.

"Under apartheid there were a number of prison farms. Some of the missing persons in the '80s were buried on farms run by Tongaat Hulett on the North Coast. Although it was on Tongaat Hulett land, they said they knew nothing about it.

"If it happened there, it could have happened on the South Coast," said De Haas.

mthethwab@sundaytimes.co.za, savidesm@sundaytimes.co.za, pillayt@sundaytimes.co.za