The community members of Zwathi, which falls under Ward 4 of AbaQulusi municipality, protested in 2018. Picture: Vryheid Herald
More and more male South Africans are seen wearing T-shirts opposing violence against women and children as a deep-seated sense of the ownership of citizenship starts to slowly take root.
But by far the most radical groundswell of this has happened in the northern KwaZulu-Natal town of Vryheid by the Zwathi community, protesting the violent deaths of two white farmers gunned down by a fusillade of AK47 fire.
Billy van Rooyen and his father-in-law, Ronnie Lombard, died during a farm attack in April.
The upsurge of feeling about the double tragedy was as spontaneous and it was heartfelt, an expression of the spirit of ubuntu which should bind us all as a nation.
Ward councillor Michael Khumalo put it best as the community marched in numbers to the Gluckstadt police station to hand over a memorandum regarding their concerns over the rise in crime in their area.
“These criminals are not just killing farmers, they are killing us as a community,” Khumalo read from the memorandum.
“If one was without food, you were able to go to Billy and ask for his help, he would do so with a willing heart.
“The question now is where will such help come from?”
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