This op-ed explores the disturbing parallels between a gruesome murder in South Africa and the harsh realities of Nigeria’s leadership, drawing comparisons between the brutality of white farmers and the political oppression faced by Nigerians under current governance.
Nigerians and indeed, the world, watched aghast last week as a South African grisly movie reel began to roll. Full of all the elements of a movie, it was however a real story. The cast was two black women who, on August 17, were shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer. The victims, Maria Makgato, 45, and Lucia Ndlovu, 34 were scavenging for edible food in consignments of recently expired or soon-to-be-expired produce on a farm located near Polokwane, a South African northern Limpopo province.
The expired edible foods were meant for pigs. Before her gruesome murder, Makgato was the mother of four sons between 22 and five years ages. Farm owner, Zachariah Johannes Olivier, 60, had reportedly ordered his employees, Adrian de Wet, 19, and William Musora, 50, to kill the two women. Their bodies were then fed to pigs, to destroy evidence of their murder. Several days later, police found decomposing, horrific bodies of the women in the farm’s pigsty, partly eaten up by the swine.
In South Africa, farming communities are severely under attack by white farmers, exacerbating already high crime statistics in the country. This is especially rife in rural areas, despite the official cessation of the obnoxious racist system of apartheid 30 years ago. In the same August, in the eastern province of Mpumalanga, two men – a farmer and his security guard – were arrested in Laersdrift, located beside a small South African town called Middleburg, for allegedly murdering two men on a farm. Accused of stealing sheep, the men were incinerated beyond recognition.
“Nigerians’ bodies are figuratively fed to swine, simply because they pick expired pig foods from our collective farm.”
The court had to subject their ashes to DNA analysis to be able to establish their identities. In the same vein, a 70-year-old white farmer, Christoffel Stoman, of Lutzville, a Western Cape province, had allegedly driven over and broken the two legs of a 6-year-old boy for picking a fallen orange on his farm. The boy’s mother, walking with him past Stoman’s farm, on their way to town to purchase groceries, was horrified as his son got mowed down by Stoman.
As they watch this grisly movie, like the rest of the world, Nigerians are entitled to their shock. However, literally and figuratively, on the social and political planes, our country can be said to be grappling with leaders of similar sadism as South Africa’s Oliviers. Almost on a daily basis, Nigerians’ bodies are figuratively fed to swine, simply because they pick expired pig foods from our collective farm.
Nigerian leadership in the last seventeen months, like Olivier, has figuratively thrown Nigerians’ bodies to the swine who now take turns to feast on our flesh for supper. Nigerians are writhing under excruciating poverty occasioned by wickedness in high places. They encounter limited vision and foresight of leaders who claimed it was their time to rule but who have no time to think through the people’s plights. Perhaps the greatest Olivier-like savagery inflicted on Nigerians is the gradual destruction and undermining of the foundation of democracy by the born-to-rule taskmasters. Of a truth, the last 25 years of civilian rule have shown Nigerians that the barrels of the gun will not rescue them from underdevelopment.
“In almost 17 months, all the institutions of democracy, like the electoral system, free press, and impartial judicial system have been dealt mortal blows.”
The people discovered, almost too late, that soldiers themselves were the foundation of Nigeria’s national calamity. However, in almost 17 months, all the institutions of democracy, like the electoral system, free press/speech, and impartial judicial system have been dealt mortal blows. They are all comatose today. This speaks to that eternal aphorism that democracies are not killed by guns but by wicked undermining of the foundation of democracy.
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