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Mabuyane Mabuza reflects on the comments on social media at the surprise that Thabo Bester was not registered at Home Affairs. She writes it is a real phenomenon, especially in farming communities.
I have been reading and watching with surprise as people on social media expressed their "shock" that Thabo Bester was not registered in the population registration system of the Department of Home Affairs.
Some of the comments were ignorant and others purely from a place of privilege.
Some came from young people who were born after 1994 and have no idea how the apartheid system worked and could not be bothered to read further than Instagram and Twitter posts.
Those, I can understand, but my issue is when a legal "expert" follows the same type of reasoning.
I watched in absolute horror as this expert expressed on a TV news channel his "shock" at the fact Bester is not registered with the department.
This phenomenon does not require one to have studied law to know of its existence. Most black people from townships and rural areas are aware of this phenomenon.
The case of Maria Mabaso
Criminals convince each other that not getting an ID renders them invisible and, therefore, they can live a life of crime without detection because they are not in the system.
The current Home Affairs system, where the department does it in hospital, has covered some ground in making it easier to register births.
This brings me to Maria Mabaso, Bester's mother. She like many people in farming communities (especially during apartheid) were unregistered. As an unregistered mother, she did not register her baby after giving birth.
With that background, allow me to share my own Bester type of scenario I encountered when first I arrived on a farm we had purchased in 2013.
The previous farmer introduced us to the workers after a transaction that allowed us to buy the farm was finalised. We were to take the workers over as part of the business transaction.
One Saturday morning, we drove from our home in Centurion to the farm to have a meeting with our new employees.
We had a list of their names from the previous farmer, but it was just a list that was thin on detail. Our mission was to get everyone to furnish us with their legal documents. This is when we learnt about the phenomenon of unregistered people, just like the Besters.
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It is a real phenomenon, so please, don't dismiss it just because you don't know about it.
Only three of the workers were able to produce IDs. After those without documents were asked to sort it out, only two of them brought IDs a few months later.
It turned out that even though these were a late registration, it was easier because their mothers were still alive and registered. They followed the Home Affairs processes and got registered.
One worker's story was more complex. He was born in 1982, according to the mother of one of the younger workers in our employ, on the nearby farm.
He claimed to have attended the local primary school. We trekked to the school with him in search of his records so he could get registered, but it was a dead end.
The mother of one of the workers who was friends with this man's mother takes him to Home Affairs and claims him as her own. The department tells them there must be DNA test done. He has made a bad situation worse; he stands down for a while.
Only after asking for an update did, we learn the truth about this latest move. We call in the woman in question for a meeting. She tells us that Freddy (not his real name) was born in 1982 in Denydale, a farming area outside Randfontein to Dora (not her real name) from Tsolo in the Eastern Cape.
She further states Freddy's* mother had another son, Zakhele (not his real name) in 1985. She tells us Zakhele had a present father even though Zakhele has always been a "naughty" child who ran away from home.
We quickly learn Zakhele's father had been playing a father figure to Freddy even after his mother left her young sons behind when she "returned" to the Eastern Cape. The woman further informs us that Freddy's mother left when he was about 11 or 12.
She says she has not seen nor heard from her since. Freddy moved around the area until he found employment at our farm under the previous owner.
We ask Freddy to ask his "dad" for a meeting. He also obliged and shed more light. He is a South African citizen from Matatiele, who came to the West Rand to work on the mines. He says his son Zakhele has an ID, but no one knows where he is.
DNA needed
The man says he and Freddy's mother met in the area in 1983 when Freddy was just a toddler, but he has never been to her home in the Eastern Cape. He says some of her relatives he met at the time have since left the area. He recalls two people being the relatives, but he cannot be certain.
He says he wants to try help Freddy get an ID. Soon the two go to Home Affairs to start the process, but Home Affairs again bring up the issue of DNA.
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They are worried how they'll get around this one, as Zakhele, the link between the two men is nowhere to be found. Another dead end.
As we try to find more information about Freddy's family in the Eastern Cape, tragedy hits with my husband dying in 2019. Then Covid-19 hit, and everything came to a halt again.
In 2021 as things were starting to get better, Freddy left his job without a word. I heard he was working for another farmer in the area. He took his young family and just left. A few weeks later, the farm supervisor came knocking at my door saying Freddy was around and would like a word with me. I invited him in, and he apologised the way he left.
You see, Freddy had his own share of personal tragedy. Two of his children died within a short space of time. It was for this reason, according to Freddy, that left the farm to start afresh. I told him I respected his decision.Freddy, like Thabo Bester, is a South African child but is not in the system due to many socio-economic issues that were the direct result of apartheid. As we continue to discuss the Thabo Bester matter, we should remove ourselves from our privilege and try educating ourselves around such matters.
There are many Maria Mabasos and Freddys around, you just don't know about. As I sat and watched Dr Aaron Motsoaledi's media conference, I couldn't help but think about Freddy's sad existence and understood exactly what the minister was talking about as I had come face to face with a similar situation.
- Mabuyane Mabuza is the interim vice-chairperson of the South African Guild of Mobility Journalists and chairperson of the South African Car of the Year competition. She is also a grain farmer.*Editor's note: This piece was edited to remove the impression that births had to be registered at a hospital when someone gave birth. There are facilities available at hospitals to make the process easier.
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