When the males in my family would tend cows and goats, or do the heavy work, my baby siblings and I did the dirty work — we took care of pigs. After school meant pushing a wheelbarrow and going to the neighbours to collect leftover food for the swine.
Pigs eat more than they breathe, I think. So every effort went into making sure they were always full. I grew up around them and the one thing I can’t get used to is how badly they smell: it’s just offensive.
I was that awkward village girl who went to the neighbours to check that the pigs were not foraging in their backyards. They had to be in the hog pen by 6pm, otherwise we would be in trouble. I considered this a softer task because we weren’t required to fetch them from the bush, but I knew they were dangerous.
In fact, when there’s a newborn in the yard we keep them at bay. They are not particularly hungry for human flesh, but pigs are vicious. I once witnessed a sow devour its piglet. We figured it was going through post-partum depression because we kept it well fed.
This particular sow had its own stall with its nine babies, five of which it killed. I was shocked, there was no evidence of the four it killed when we found it in the morning — no bones or trotters. Pigs are aggressive and swift, they are greedy and would eat anything.
Though I’m now a city girl and no longer run after pigs, I know that given the right training they can be deadlier than pit bulls. Anyway, my brother has taken over the subsistence piggery and collects expired food from the local supermarkets and substandard vegetables from the local farms to feed them. He often brings non-perishable foods and when the pigs come across the pile of tins they easily chew through the container and eat what’s inside.
Maria Makgato, 47, and Lucia Ndlovu, 34, allegedly met their demise when they trespassed on a farm in Limpopo a week ago. They were allegedly shot with their male companion, who managed to escape, when they illegally entered the premises to steal expired dairy products.
Zachariah Olivier, 60, the owner of Onverwacht farm near Kotishing village in the Sebayeng policing area, Adriaan de Wet, 19, and William Musoro, 45, were arrested after the decomposing bodies were found in a pigsty.
This method of disposing of a body is inconceivable and shocking, but not innovative. It’s something reminiscent of the killings of underworld aggressors by antagonist Brick Top in the 2000 movie Snatch. All he needed was a gun, a plastic bag and a drift of pigs.
In the early 1990s and early 2000s, serial killer and Canadian pig farmer Robert Pickton allegedly took female victims to his farm and fed them to pigs. The remains or DNA of 33 women were found on the farm. Pickton claimed he had killed 49 women. The police are said to have uncovered horrific human remains, including dismembered hands and feet and the severed heads of women.
Be wary of a man who keeps a piggery.
Before we dig into the barbarism of these killings, we acknowledge that trespassing is a legal offence. By law, it is a criminal offence to enter someone’s premises without their permission or lawful reason. If the entry results in provocation or the violation of personal and property safety, the police must be alerted, and equally, the provoked parties have a right to defend themselves.
Maybe we were lucky to find out about the two women. Can we be confident that they were the only ones fed to those pigs?
So what do we do with this?
Every so often, we are forced to project meaning into the hatred perpetuated against black people: their physicality, dignity and right to exist. We have to explain why senseless killings motivated by racial intolerance are exactly that: senseless. One way or the other we are plunged into activism.
But on a farm, safety is of paramount importance. One is vulnerable to stock thieves, murderers, there is expensive machinery and family are at risk too. It doesn’t help that a few whites have over the years launched an international campaign claiming that they are under siege, that they too are being killed on the basis of race.
What is it about throwing black bodies into a pigsty that has sent shock waves through the country? What constitutes the philosophy of this alleged murderer?
It’s the audacity.
The audacity of racial violence, the audacity of whiteness as a system and not just a skin colour. It’s what happens when you are not forced to pay reparations for the horror you unleashed on a group of people when you still make a living off proceeds of a horrendous crime: apartheid.
The truth is that we are inevitably trapped in a fundamentally racist system. When such murders are committed, they transcend the conceptual sphere of survival and tap into the conceived confidence that one would get away with murder.
We are shocked that pigs can get rid of a body because we confused social cohesion with integration. We forgave people who never apologised or atoned for their role in the subjugation of black people. So when they shoot black people over sunflowers and put them in coffins alive, we are shocked because we thought they are on the same page as us. That they too want a united nation. Most of them don't.
And maybe we were lucky to find out about the two women. Can we be confident that they were the only ones fed to those pigs?
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