Abstract
ON 10 NOVEMBER 1993, while seeking to test a questionnaire on farm removals in the Orange Free State (OFS),1 I encountered JMM, a 27-year-old man who detached himself from a yard in the Tweespruit New Location-a sprawl of corrugated-sheeting shacks and volunteered to answer my questions. We went to his own shack, on the southern edge of the settlement, to pursue the interview. He had been allocated a site by 'MaComrade', the ad hoc committee of ANC youth whose authority in a volatile political climate was acknowledged in the township for many purposes, including that of granting research permission to errant foreigners. JMM had built the shack two weeks previously, and lived there with his common-law wife ATM and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. He and his wife were both unemployed. They had left school in Standard 8. JMM had just been evicted by a new owner from the farm where he had spent most of his youth. His elderly mother, who had worked in the farmer's garden, but was now a pensioner, remained on the farm. His father had worked for the farmer as a herdsman from 1977 until his death in 1986.
Published Version
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