My colleagues have been seriously and forcefully conversing about our cover story. Rust-ter-Vaal residents allegedly refused to allow people from other areas to bury their loved ones at ‘their’ cemetery.
While one colleague feels that the residents who blocked the streets and allegedly ended up burning the mourners’ bus were within their right and protecting ‘their land’ another feels that this is pure racism from the part of the residents who feel that the land is theirs and that they are the only ones that should have the right to bury or be buried there.
Although I do not think that in this instance the Rust ter Vaal residents are being racist, I think that they are being egotistical in not wanting to allow other residents from within the Vaal, in particular township, to bury their loved ones at the cemetery. The land belongs to the municipality, doesn’t it? It would have been another case had the cemetery been on private property or had they bought plots within the cemetery from the municipality to bury their loved ones in future.
I feel that we should also refrain from playing the race card as for the many years that I have known and worked with Rust-ter-Vaal people, there has never been a single incident where I have found them to be racist, so why would they start now?
Since the democratic dispensation, many coloured people have moved from their ‘traditional residences’ where they were confined by the apartheid regime into the townships and when I say this I mean MANY of them.
It is only right that the police and government officials also get involved in this commotion.
I feel that all parties should come to an amicable understanding of how they are going to operate the burials at the cemetery.
We should not stop for excuses where there are none, we should stop blaming others for the situations that we find ourselves in. In this case blacks should stop playing the race card and the coloureds should consider what they would have done if the tables were to turn.
Lerato…