My dear Joshua,

You were born on the eve of the farm invasions and you are now four years old. As your Daddy, I have important decisions to make for you - decisions that will affect the rest of your life. As a family, we live in a country where 85 in every 100 white farmers have been removed from their homes since you were born. We live in a time where inflation is the highest of any country in the world and our economy is the fastest shrinking. We see our friends and our skilled people leaving all the time and they say, ‘We are leaving for the sake of our children.’

Maybe it’s stubbornness; maybe it’s the inherent fighting spirit passed on to me by your grandfather; but deep down I believe it’s God’s will for us and I say, ‘We are staying for the sake of the children.’ It may sound perverse given what I have said about the country that we live in, but I wish to explain.

At only three months, you had your first run-in with the darkness. They smashed up our car with axes and rocks and tried to kill Mummy and you and I but God got us through that. Your Daddy’s been beaten with sticks and kicked in the dust by a CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) man and a crowd and God got us through that. Your Daddy then had another smash-up in his car with war veterans and, by a miracle, God got him through that.

Your Daddy’s been shot at and abused; he’s dealt with beaten farmers and beaten farmers’ wives and beaten farm workers; and looted properties and butchered animals and even bloody butchered farmers murdered in the name of land reform. He’s had his job and his car taken away from him and the farming hierarchy has shunned him but God got us through that. He has been arrested and he has seen broken men coming out of prison and broken families spread out across the continents but I still say with your Mummy, ‘We are staying for the sake of you children.’

We have undoubtedly been more fortunate than most. We still have our home - for today. We still have our family around us - for today. We still have an income - for today. And, for today, when I see you go off in the morning with the shepherd - your hair the same colour as winter grass, head bobbing up and down behind the sheep, a little wild figure at one with the veldt - I feel so privileged to know that you are growing up in such an environment, learning to know and appreciate the real things away from the invasive world of cars and noise and shoebox flats.

When I say we are staying for your sake, I say it because as you grow up, you will face challenges of a nature that you will not face in other places and you will know hardships which, so long as we face them right, will make you real. You have seen death and heartfelt grief already and you have felt dust and wet earth and sun and rain and you know already the joys of growing things and hunting things and of being part of real life - the raw life that comes from being a son of the African soil.

For some, this impassioned reality is simply too much. After a time, they grow tired. The harsh extremities become just too much. The constant fight for our very survival eventually wears them down. “Goodbye,” they say. “Goodbye to all that. We would rather not be part of it.” And off they go to a land of security and progress and hardly ever come back because they know they have left their hearts behind and it would be too painful to become reacquainted with them.

From the cosy world of material security, it is an unthinkable madness that anybody should choose to stay here; but as one octogenarian couple said to me while in the process of being forcefully evicted out of their home of 50 years recently, “We do not deserve to have our home or our country if we are not prepared to fight for them.”

So our decision to stay has not been taken lightly. We have taken it knowing that things are going to get worse; that the people in power will continue to persecute us because of the colour of our skins; that when this storm is passed it won’t take long for the next one to brew up; that our decision to confront evil will continue to have consequences.

Our decision has been made knowing that when we become tired, God will give us the strength to go on, and that somehow in the groping darkness that this storm has plunged us into, we have a responsibility before God not to be overcome by it, but rather to be a beacon of light if ever we can. I write this with a prayer that you will some day understand.

With all my love, Daddy (Ben Freeth)

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