While everyone is preoccupied by staving off the dangers of Covid-19, frightened by a clutter of sad news about shuttered world economies, increased unemployment and thousands of fatalities as a result of the pandemic, it is encouraging to notice that amid the doom and gloom there is a reason to be cheerful.
The recent handover of the Die Poort Farm Primary School in Hekpoort by the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development, together with the Gauteng department of education and other stakeholders, provided a glimmer of hope to the farming community of Die Poort and the neighbouring farms. Farm schools lack resources because they are built on privately owned land belonging to the farmer, which makes it difficult for the government to intervene.
The fact that the land on which the school is built was donated by the farmer is progressive in that it provided both departments the leeway to act in demolishing mud structures that were used as classrooms, to build a state-of-the-art building that has all the trappings of a well-resourced school. For me the building of a school on a farm that is privately owned has far-reaching implications.
First, the farmer acted benevolently and progressively by voluntarily giving away the piece of land on which the school is built, showing that he acknowledged the importance of the education of the children whose parents work for him. This avoided the lengthy process of invoking section