The deep lines that divide South Africa: It's not all black and white

She needed a lift to the clinic 60km away. The bakkie driver was happy to help. It was nothing more than a routine transaction in the platteland.

But when Linda Steenkamp climbed into a sheep cage on the back of Johan Erasmus's bakkie, and someone took a photo of her there, it exposed the deep lines that continue to divide South Africa.

A racism storm erupted on social media yesterday after the photo was posted on Facebook by a farmworkers' group, with Erasmus accused by the Western Cape ANC of being "blind to cruel acts of racism".

Sociologist Jeremy Seekings, director of the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town, said: "Most South Africans take racial differences for granted to an unusual extent. The accusation of racism is a crude measure of someone's kindness or nastiness."

 

But Women on Farms Project director Colette Solomon said the incident showed that "old patterns of power inequality and power hierarchy" were still common.

"Most of us who don't have contact with farmers and farmworkers ... are actually oblivious to what's happening in 2017, for heaven's sake. And the fact that it's so normalised is perverse," she said.

Speaking to The Times yesterday about life on a farm in Eastern Cape, Steenkamp, 27, said simply: "It is nice. I am happy there."

• Woman in cage on bakkie – racist incident or storm in a teacup?The social media jury is out on the version of events that led to a black woman being transported in a cage on the back of a bakkie.

She is four months pregnant with her third child and had an appointment at a clinic in Cradock on Tuesday. Erasmus, a regular visitor to the farm where she lives with her boyfriend and children, agreed to give her a lift.

"I climbed on the back myself," said Steenkamp. "I didn't want to sit in front, it was too hot. I wanted to sit in the wind."

In a video posted online yesterday, Steenkamp sits on a bench and a woman says: "We are making this little video to send on to people trying to make this ugly."

Speaking to Steenkamp, the woman says: "You didn't want to get in front because you guys are used to riding at the back. You people like the wind."

• I was just giving her a lift - man explains caged woman on back of bakkieA man photographed driving with a woman inside a cage on the back of his bakkie has brushed off criticism‚ saying he was merely giving her a lift.

Steenkamp agrees and says Erasmus asked her if she wanted to sit in front.

Erasmus said he and Steenkamp had barely spoken and she got into the back after the cage was loaded.

"She herself climbed into that thing and I dropped her off in Cradock," he said.

"This cage on the back of the bakkie is a sheep cage that we use to weigh lambs. The cage is loose, I tie it down with the straps and then I take it off and weigh lambs.

"I am not happy about [being portrayed as racist] because I am trying to help people, but how this thing is going is like I did something wrong."

Seekings said "racialised or even racist behaviour can co-exist with kindness, with the corollary that critics or opponents of racism can be unkind or nasty".

"There are parts of South Africa where supposedly racist white farmers are much more likely to offer a stranger a lift in their bakkie than the much more politically correct anti-racist from town ... who drives past in an expensive car.

"There is a blurred line between sometimes treating people differently and being 'racist'."

But Solomon, who works with female farmworkers in Western Cape, said racism was still the norm in farming areas.

"By and large, those socioeconomic relationships of inequality are still very much in place," she said. "Very often it's not necessarily a law that is broken, but it is the day-to-day indignities that farmworkers and farm dwellers face at the hands of farmers.

"It's the way they are talked to, the fact that sometimes they are sworn at. It's these day-to-day things that lead to them saying: 'Ag dit is maar net hoe die baas is', (That's just how the boss is) or sometimes they say: 'Dit is hoe die master is'."

The deputy secretary of the Western Cape ANC, Thandi Makasi, said Erasmus's decision to allow Steenkamp to sit in the cage was "extremely offensive", and her willingness to do so did not excuse him.

"It reflects the need to understand racism in order to recognise and counter it."