“Three Months to Leave”: A Century of Roots Uprooted by Fire and Fear at Waterval Farm

For January Madisa, 46, Waterval Farm in Dithabeng, Mpumalanga, is more than a piece of land. It is a living archive. His great-grandmother and grandmother were born and buried there. For over a hundred years, his family lived on the farm, paying for their tenure not with rent, but with labourtending the land, rearing livestock, and ploughing fields for a succession of owners who largely left them in peace.

That fragile peace shattered in 2022 with the arrival of a new farmer. “He introduced himself as the new owner and promised we could stay,” Madisa recalls. That promise lasted two days. Soon after, the instruction came: reduce your kraals and fields. Then, the ultimatum: “We were given three months to leave.”

A Campaign of Coercion: From Trenches to Torched Homes

What followed, Madisa alleges, was a systematic campaign to make life untenable. Grazing land was set alight while cattle were still on it. Deep trenches were dug around the homestead, and electric fencing erected, cutting the family off from their grazing and, most painfully, their ancestral gravesite.

When Madisa’s mother died in September 2023, the family was allegedly prevented from burying her with her ancestors and forced to inter her within their cramped homestead compound. Their livestock was decimateda herd of 73 cattle reduced to 17, and 45 goats lost to alleged poisoning and shootings.

A Pattern of Terror: “What Used to Be a Happy Home Is Now a Ruin”

The Madisas are not alone. Mthandeni Sibanyoni, 75, recounts a similar story of threats against his children forcing his family to flee in 2023. He tried to maintain a presence, visiting the homestead weekly. In March 2024, he returned to find it in flames. “What used to be a happy home is now a ruin. I had more than 50 head of cattle but, today, I have nothing,” he said.

Both families point to the new farmer as the common thread, alleging he employs a local vigilante group to carry out attacks and uses accusations of stock theft to justify the pressure. The farmer could not be reached for comment.

Their stories paint a chilling picture of forced displacement through fear, where the law moves slowly, and the tactics on the ground are brutal and immediate. For these families, a century of roots is being torn up not by legal process, but by fire, wire, and the looming shadow of violence.