Growing up on a farm helped Vusi see past colour

THIS WEEK the fight against racism was brought into the spotlight with events scheduled around the country as part of Anti-Racism Week, an initiative set to help win this fight and bring about reconciliation and peace.

One resident who has had interesting inter-racial encounters is restaurant manager, Vusi Ndaba.

Born and bred in Vryheid, Vusi started off working as a paramilitary and went on to work as part of the Emergency Services Team (EST) for the correctional services department.

According to Vusi, working for the correctional sevices in the 90’s was still a very difficult task as the country had just moved on from the apartheid regime.

“A black man being in authority or giving orders was still very new and quiet taboo and thus we often got a lot of attitude and trouble from some of the inmates,” he said.

The whole idea of racism was completely foreign to Vusi who grew up on a farm, a place where he said that colour and race were not an issue.

Growing up on a farm owned by current local Goldenpeak Spur owner Shaun Friend’s father, Vusi recalls how all the children on the farm were treated equally.

“My father worked for Shaun’s dad and so our family, like many others at the time, lived in one of the homesteads surrounding the farm,” Vusi recalled.

Vusi reminisced of a life that was completely different from the stories they heard about neighbouring farms.

“My family and the Friend family shared each others problems and achievements. We were a family. I remember how Shaun’s mom used to give English lessons to some of the farmworkers, and how in return they taught her and her children Zulu. Shaun’s younger brother Justin became so fluent in Zulu that it was sometimes hard for one to bare in mind that it was not his home language,” Vusi said with a laugh.

“We were never treated as, or made to feel that, we were the ” servant’s” children. On the first week of January, just before schools re-opened, the whole family (and by whole family I mean every single person on the farm) was taken on a fishing trip to Sodwana Bay by Mr Friend,” Vusi said.

The trip was an interesting one for the then young Vusi as he says that many seemed shocked to see this big mixed family scampering about with no care in the world.

“When I picture it now, I often laugh just thinking of how it must have looked to see this boere oom playing with these black children as though they were his own,” Vusi said with a chuckle.

According to Vusi, growing up with the Friend family is what made him confident when interacting with different races.

“I feel that racism is caused by the fear of something different. A different race, a different experience,”

“In this industry, the struggle to communicate is what sparks most arguments. People often feel more comfortable when they are being addressed in their own language. What we need to realise is that no language or race is more important than another. We should all respect each other irrespective of which racial background one is from,”

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