Waiting For The Promised Land

Sifiso wakes up to the shrill high-pitched sounds of a young child screaming and two unruly men arguing over a shrivelled R100 note they had fortuitously found near the entrance of the shebeen at the corner of his dusty, uneven and potholed street.

His sparsely furnished shack is everything he has in life for now and probably the foreseeable future. He hears the radio blaring from the shack next to his: there is some big story about Standard and Poor's and rising interest rates on the news. He listens to the news for a fleeting moment and then calmly stares at the hodgepodge of old magazines covers, faded newspapers and black sheets of plastic that are his humble ceiling. As residents of the shantytown walk past his dwelling noisily, he is slowly reminded of home sweet home: a tiny impoverished village located deep in the mountainous plains of the Eastern Cape.

He fondly remembers the marvellous times he had growing up there. Happy and fulfilling thoughts of friends and family fill his mind and heartfelt and lifelike recollections of scenic landscapes and unbridled nature flood his imagination. He is moved to tears almost instantaneously. He cries uncontrollably and silently in the false promise of yet another dawn and wonders if this debilitating poverty and marginal existence he is shackled by is all his life will ever amount to. The small dingy shack is cold and desolate and one of hundreds of ramshackle structures that sprouted up on an empty stretch of land near Tembisa in Johannesburg not too long ago.

Sifiso had never wanted to leave home nine months ago. But he had to find a job, so he could support his mother and five-year-old sister. Much like most of the young men and women in his home village: Sifiso did not do well in the highly important Matriculation examinations. Some girls did not even make it to the final year of high school. They dropped out of high school prematurely after falling pregnant in Grade 10. Other less fortunate students had simply left school for want of money by the time Sifiso finished his high school studies.

Sifiso goes out in search of odd jobs to do every day. It is an incredibly arduous task and most dispiriting mental exercise. The little money he earns on a good day goes towards food and rent and the occasional taxi ride when times are really fantastic. Whenever he hears of an opening somewhere, he walks there for the most part, no matter how far away it may be. He has tried getting work at the restaurants and supermarkets nearby on several occasions, but has failed each time. You have to know someone who knows somebody who is a manager or supervisor just to get a job interview. He has also tried waiting by the roadside in the hope he might get a permanent job from some gentle soul. But all his numerous efforts are yet to bear positive results.

Now he has heard this incessant wrangling over fast-track land reform and curiously wonders whether he might get fertile land to farm on. Perhaps his forefathers or somebody up in the big sky has seen his desperate plight and heard his daily pleas for help. He vividly recalls how his mother and uncles unendingly bemoaned the land they farmed on at their small family compound: the largely barren soils yielded inconsequential harvests every year for reasons beyond their influence. So they must find work on the neighbouring commercial farms to supplement their measly incomes. While they wholly appreciate the work and money they get there many villagers yearn for an opportunity to farm on rich soils and on a much bigger scale than their meagre circumstances allow them to at the moment. It is all they have ever hoped for in the village.

They retain deep traditional ties to the commercial land and can still recount the events that led to the loss of their beloved tribal lands. But the overwhelming and reassuring presence of fairly jovial and mutually beneficial social and economic relationships between the villagers and commercial farmers hides the profound sadness the peasant farmers harbour over not having land of their own. Yet they still hope to possess viable farming land one day and do not hate the commercial farmers or wish them misfortune. The peasant farmers just yearn to reap the fruits of the land their ancestors once occupied and they would like to live and work alongside the commercial farmers as equal partners. But last year Sifiso decided the matter of land reform was not worth waiting for in the village. He had his own pressing battle to overcome: poverty.

So he will stand up for the right of his family to own land and gain some measure of the South African dream. He will support the drive to alter land ownership patterns with dogged pride and fanatical fervour and attempt to stake his claim to good farming land at any cost to the status quo. He will vote for land reform without a shadow of hesitance in his actions. He does not understand the momentous furore over South Africa being downgraded by Standard and Poor's recently and does not want to in all honesty. Why should he care about the precious and complicated concerns of his well-to-do compatriots? He has never had the luxury of signing a million rand mortgage and he has no vehicle finance or credit score to angst about all day long. He has no discernible job to protect or money market investments to agonisingly fret over whenever negative reviews pound the South Africa rand and dampen the economic outlook of the nation. He literally has no roof over his head. So you will not find him or his mother and uncles marching for political change just yet. But they will rally behind the march to claim the promised land.