Many of South Africa’s white commercial farmers see the land-claim process as an attack. For black claimants fighting to get back land stolen by the apartheid government, it’s about being made whole again. On Bosparadys farm in North West province, the two groups are trying to find a third way.
William Khourie’s eyes are rheumy with age and tear up easily as he stares across fields dotted with baled hay, the tears a symptom of late-life diabetes. The idling engine of his bakkie purrs as he rolls to a stop in the middle of a bumpy dirt road. A lamb gallops alongside for a few moments before heading back to the pasture from which it has just escaped. “I need to eat soon,” he says, a propos of nothing. “I can feel my blood sugar dropping.”
The sky is cloudless and the day has warmed since he began work at 02h00, when his dairy cows were brought to the milking shed. The farm’s 1 200 cows provide him with 50 000 litres of organic milk a day. It is then either bottled and shipped to market under the farm’s Bosparadys label – the name means “bush paradise” in Afrikaans – or made into yogurt, cheese or amasi.
“I built this farm,” he says, the satisfaction clear in his voice. “When I came here there was nothing. Mud huts for the workers – I built real homes. I dug new dams and stocked them with fish. I put up new fences and cleared away rocks from the fields. Today we can compete with the big dairies but its taken years of blood and sweat.”
A resilient business
Everything Khourie owns today has been paid for with almost two decades of gruelling work. Bosparadys is a 1 200-hectare dairy farm just over the Gauteng border in North West, just outside the town of Koster. Khourie has owned the land since 1997, when he bought a bankrupt farm on auction and built a thriving dairy, and raised sheep, pigs and chickens.
A recent drought has made life tougher for farmers in the region, but Bosparadys has been able to ride it out because of the diversity of the business. It makes a healthy profit in the good years and is stable enough to survive the bad. Between himself and his three sons, Khourie runs a dairy, an egg business and a piggery, and raises flocks of sheep.
Two hundred hectares of his land is given over to herds of game. His dams are popular weekend fishing spots teeming with barbel, carp and black bass.
“With my sons helping out we are able to build and manage a big business,” Khourie says. “My sons have been brought up on a farm and they drive the business with the same dedication I have. I’ve been blessed with sons that like the smell of the soil when it’s ploughed – and that’s priceless.”
The hovering threat of land claims is making his neighbours sell land and cattle as they struggle to adapt to new realities. Those with children are pushing them away from an uncertain life on the land, into careers indoors and at desks. “No one wants their children to pour their heart into something that can just be taken away. It is easier to work at a computer than take care of the land and cattle.”…
South Africa Today – South Africa News
