I don’t know what’s going on in the community. I don’t know what happened. I just heard Optel is gone. I don’t know why he’s dead today.
The first shot was fired and after a short break there were four others. Bang bang bang. In quick succession.
Legendary San tracker Optel Rooy is dead. Shot in the back, allegedly by Kalahari police.
Optel was a driving force in the #Khomani San renaissance. He’d lived as a hunter-gatherer, and was training young San in the ancient ways.
Our documentary team had grown to know the Khomani by working with them on various projects over many years.
Over the phone, the circumstances of Optel’s death sounded ominous.
The grieving Khomani told us that they believe police hunted Optel down like an animal.
We packed up our cameras and drove to the Kalahari to find out what had happened.
When we arrive at Optel’s vigil, the tension in the Kalahari is electric.
Our contacts among the San say that Optel's death seemed like murder
The tracks say it was one man that chased Optel. The police said that there were two – Lieb and his colleague and that both of them shot. Which is unlikely, as there are only two sets of tracks – not three, or four. And one comes back, and that’s the one that hunted Optel.
Over the last five years, five San have died violent deaths here. Their murders have not been solved, and now Optel has been shot.
Since ancient times, San hunter gatherers occupied the vast South African landscape. They are the First People of Africa, and of all humanity.But everything changed when colonists arrived on our shores.The San were declared hostile, untameable savages. Bounties were set, and they were hunted down.Survivors were enslaved or scattered and killed by foreign diseases.
European museums displayed the bodies of the San who were killed during the genocide.
For us, seeing Optel in his coffin was a chilling echo of the genocide of the San in Southern Africa.The #Khomani are South Africa’s only San culture to have survived this genocide, with unbroken links to their ancestral heritage.
The Khomani are a tiny, fragile community living here on the outskirts of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park that straddles South Africa and Botswana
Optel Rooy was much-loved and respected by the #Khomani as a master tracker. He was nicknamed ‘COBRA’, for the way he moved in the bush.Optel grew up in the wilderness as a free hunter-gatherer.
But when he was caught poaching in the Kgalagadi Park, Optel chose to settle with the #Khomani, and he started a family.He became the leading trainer of young Khomani trackers.
But naturally he was a child that loved nature. He used to live from the veld. He was almost dead when we picked him up. That’s why we gave him the name Optel, because we picked him up. And so he operated with us until he became a game ranger and tracker. And so in nature conservation he grew up and became strong, as he always worked with me. That’s why it’s so heavy on my heart to bear witness to Optel’s passing.
Optel was one of our best trackers. A cultural man who came from the wilderness. A man who served in nature conservation who we could use best in tourism.
Optel didn’t disadvantage anyone. Optel didn’t rob anyone. Optel never put his finger in somebody’s eye.
He lies today under the ground. Because of injustice. Full of life. Hunted like a gemsbok. Must he lie there, innocent? That man who lies there, he lies there innocent.
After many decades living as dispossessed squatters, the #Khomani San won a historic Land Claim in 1999.VO 20: They received 37 000ha of formerly white farms and game ranches, and rights in the Kgalagadi Park …… because with the recovery of their land by the San … because of the possibility to rebuild their lives, the whole of South Africa becomes a richer place.
But at the centre of the #Khomani’s new lands was Witdraai police station, and the Molopo Lodge with its bottle store.
The cheap liquor sold at The Lodge creates mayhem for the #KhomaniAs in the rest of South Africa, life breaks down at the bottle store. Fights break out, knives flash in drunken brawls, and people get hurt -- and die.
They grab their needs inside the bottles. And I don’t want the bottle store here anymore. Because it’s become a problem for me. It’s now over-flowed into a bloodbath. I don’t want it in my community because they never used to live from it. They lived in nature, free in the wilderness. Other people became dominating over them.
The Molopo manager refused to be interviewed. He told us he doesn't like Bushmen, but their business is good
Much of the Khomani’s income is spent here on alcohol like this cheap but potent ginger beer.
Jacob Malgas and Ouma Lena still grieve over their only surviving daughter who’s head was pulverised next to the Lodge. Next to the lodge! Early in the evening. By who?
The police who are there, who must investigate these things and find the facts for us, they didn’t do it, and still have not done it. Not ever. They’ve never tracked down the correct murderers here.
Now Optel Rooy has been murdered... 300 metres from his home. Yet another unsolved murder in the area.
Dawid Kruiper and Elias Festus at the scene of Optel's killing. They were able to read the markings in the sand and had spoken to many who’d heard the gun shots
Then they hear the crack of a shot. It’s the first shot that smacks. Not through the air, but it hits something. You can hear that wet smack. It’s inside. It’s a death shot. Then they told us that while the lights were here, they heard there’s been a death here.
Over here the bullet caught him. From here he struggled and struggled through these three small thornbushes, struggling, struggling. Here he tripped , here he fell. Here is the blood stain. Here he lay
If you saw how that Bushman looked as he lay there … He was conscious. And he still pleaded, after he turned him over. He was alive. What did they do? He was alive. That’s why his eyes are open. If you’re conscious, then you look. Those people. He still pleaded. That’s why his eyes were open. But it is not for us to plead today
Emotions were running high. Ouma Gcuna alleged that Optel pleaded with his killer after he had been shot.
(Insert: A man was shot. What one can say is that) there couldn’t possibly have been justification for a shooting of a person even if a bottle store had been broken into, which apparently did not happen.
“But even if that were the case the law does not allow policemen to shoot a person who is fleeing.
Before we came to the fence, then I said to Gert, no man, the van is reversing. We had just crawled through the fence.
Then the van charged us. Lieb comes and grips me. That young cop grabs Gert. Lieb asks:Have you seen Honeyboy? We say: ‘We didn’t see him’. But then he says: ‘I want to shoot him dead’. Shortly thereafter he says to us again that if we can find out who broke into the bottle store, he will give us five hundred rand.
Earlier that day Optel had been collecting scorpions with a friend. On their way home as darkness fell, they made their regular stop at the bottle store tap to draw water for their families. But they were unaware the police were looking for suspect near the bottle store.
Me and my friend Optel were busy drawing water at the Lodge’s bottle store, where we always draw water. When we finished filling our cans, on the road back home to the Kalahari, where we live and we’d just gone through the gate, we saw the police van going in at the lodge’s bottle store.
Then they probably went to the tap. Then they charged down on us and we ran in different directions, him that way and me this way. Then I hear, just afterwards, shots.
And the next morning I heard the man was shot dead.. Because I’d run straight home. I was never so close where gunshots were fired. Except hunting wild game, but not people …
Optel's body was found in the sand here where he fell...several hundred metres from the bottle store, inside Khomani lands, close to his home.
Those are their mates. They are friends.
They are friends. They braai, eat and have fun, all of them. They are friends. They come now and braai and have fun. So that this type of thing can happen.
A tiny core of traditionalists like Optel and Ouma Gcuna are the guardians of the Khomani’s ancestral knowledge. They believe they are targeted because they practice the old ways and stand up for their rights.
He shot him because he knows he carries the knowledge. And they are against the people who carry the knowledge. We carry the knowledge. It’s not impossible that he will come and shoot me. Because he can’t stand me either. It’s true. Yes, it’s true. My people.
Ouma Gcuna told us her own father was killed by Witdraai police, right here behind the police station, in the 1930s.
That magistrate, he said to my father: A Bushman will never come with his clever stuff to me. If you open your mouth again I’ll kick you to death. Then he kicks my father. Kicks him in his liver, it’s shattered. Shattered. Shattered.
As my father fell, we stood back. Everybody stood up. The he says to them: Now you come. Pick him up and carry him.
The traditional Khomani have no faith in the local police. Witdraai police station squats in the centre of Khomani land - to them it’s a malevolent, paramilitary compound. From here, the San believe they are targeted for harassment … Witdraai police refused to be interviewed.
But the #Khomani people had no doubt who killed Optel.
Is there a reason the police wanted to shoot Optel.
Yes There could be a reason. Because, before that, there was a confrontation with the police at Brosdoring. Also on our land, but at Brosdoring side. Whereby this Lieb assaulted one of our San people..
Then he grabs the gun with his left hand and he chopped me against the head and the blood ran down. I stumbled backwards
and the other two policemen. Then they grab, Mr Liebenberg grabs me like this round my body, round my neck. Then I twisted under and out. When I was out, then he hooked me with his finger and I turned my head away – he hooked my nostril.
Then it bled again.
So far as it’s criminal it’s criminal, and departmental – it’s departmental. But before it gets bigger – at this stage I see ity as a small problem – that we will resolve through talking.
Dion took his allegations of assault and the Khomani’s grievances against the police to the Human Rights Commission in Pretoria.
When colonists first arrived in South Africa, Bushmen were using dagga, for cultural and medicinal purposes. To this day smoking dagga remains common practice among the #Khomani, but it is a major source of conflict with the police. South African police prioritise serious crime, but the Witdraai police seem obsessed with pursuing Bushmen who smoke dagga.
as a result of the dagga our people must now die (changed from annihilated). Many of our people, since the land claim, have died in terrible ways. And we want to try ourselves to bring an end to these things.
They went as far as to call the Scorpions, men, big men who grab us and punch us in the ribs and demand: You disgusting thing , where is the dagga? Because of the dagga, our people can’t suffer like this!
Then Inspector Liebenberg says to Capt De Weer, come let’s chase him
I run over the road. Then I see people looking from the shop. They scream. Then I stop and raise my arms and I ask them: Why are you hunting me?
Then he brakes to a stop right opposite me, his gun in his hand. Then he spins twice around me and speeds away, laughing. Gagaa Gagaa. Coward! Then I ran home, where I found the children. .
Just three weeks after Dion’s second alleged assault by Witdraai police, Optel was shot.
The so-called Scorpions were in fact police from Upington.
Something else bothers the community. There were unrepaired holes in the bottle store roof. They believe this was a trap.
Now they say Optel broke in to the lodge and they saw him on the roof. Now if they saw him on the roof, why didn’t they shoot him dead there? Now Optel goes through one, two, three fences. But the police are here around the place so far as that they could see him on the roof. How can Optel have run so far from them and through a lighted open patch when the nearest place is behind him, to the dune. Whereas the holes on the roof are at the back, closest to the dune..
As I reckon, they planned that night to shoot that man, to shoot Optel dead.
Because he acted so rough. He came at us so aggressively. As I hear, and as people say, he’s not finished. He’s coming again
To put it crudely – I have heard the word used, in one of the many allegations that have come from the community, that there’s still - it’s a terrible thing to say – that there’s still a word bandied around by some people in the area, called Boesman Jag. And it’s like a Bushman shot is the same as a Gemsbok shot. Which is clearly revealing of very very disturbing attitudes of regarding certain people as lesser people
Did Optel’s murder have anything to do with Dion’s complaint to the Human Right Commission?
they chase me, or shoot me dead. Because I can see the expression in his eyes. He swears at me with the gun in his hand. And he chases me again and I run away. If I ask him: What’s it about? … then they won’t answer me.
Now is he permitted to shoot Bushmen? He’s registered to shoot Bushmen. That’s what he will tell you.
What’s become of the police is something very dominating. They have not worked for our people. They work for the rich neighbouring farmers here amongst us.They didn’t work with the community here. That’s why they hunt and kill Bushmen like Springbuck.
After 10 years of democracy, some Khomani still believe the police have the authority to kill them.
A San symbol is our national coat of arms, and our motto is a San
But today, the Khomani still fear the very police who are meant to protect them.
I must walk with my weapon, because I am no longer safe. And I don’t feel safe anymore. Because the policeman who committed the murder walks around free. He walks around free.
Charges laid by the community against the police – there are dockets registered – and three of those dockets have been handed to the Independent Complaints Directorate.
Game and resources worth millions of rand have disappeared from the their lands. Not just the San are to blame. As the top tracker, Optel knew who was stealing the game. Did Optel know too much?
The Molopo bakkie was busy chasing Optel, when it hit this gully and got stuck. Because they chased Optel so fast they didn’t see the gully.
And what we think – this shell – the first shot is the fatal shot. There was a small break – and then these four shots fired after each other – klap klap klap. Then somebody runs and shoots those other shots here, to say that he fired five warning shots. Because if he fired five warning shots, they should all lie here, in one spot. And why is the other cartridge lying over there?
It’s tragic if you know how he joined us. The way in which he grew up with me and became a strong man and part of this community. Then it’s very heavy for us. For all of us.
Our hearts are very sore . We did live in peace. But we are heartbroken. We had to become slaughter animals – we didn’t know that. It’s a shame for us that the Bushman is worth nothing. That we are animals – wild animals. My people.
You don’t want to tell the government what they must do. You just want to see, you who are the community, who are a citizen of the country, you just want to see that the government truly investigated this case properly, and that they handled it with justice. This is what a person will say.
The government pays that man but they are not paid to wipe out Bushmen.
The man is buried … His murderers still walk around. I am afraid what can happen. Maybe the police want us to rise up and destroy the place, so we expose ourselves to danger.
Maybe we can chase the police out there and destroy the place. And expose ourselves to danger.)
Where the government promised us freedom – freedom. With three little blue doves. But freedom there won’t be again. Freedom is not there and will never be there again. And if it’s just on the Bushman’s side, then I don’t know.
But we haven’t known freedom. We haven’t seen it. We haven’t yet lived it. Four o clock in the morning our people must be kicked awake . Out of their sleep, and searched, as if they’re thieves and crooks.
FADE TO BLACKFADE UP OPTEL STILL FADE TO BLACK ROLL END CREDITS FADE TO BLACK ROLL POSTSCRIPT, SUPERIMPOSED ON OPTEL:
The only person arrested in connection with Optel’s death is SANNA KRUIPER, for hitting the police van with a broomstick while calling the Witdraai police “Murderers
FADE TO BLACK
The first shot was fired and after a short break there were four others. Bang bang bang. In quick succession.
Legendary San tracker Optel Rooy is dead. Shot in the back, allegedly by Kalahari police.
Optel was a driving force in the #Khomani San renaissance. He’d lived as a hunter-gatherer, and was training young San in the ancient ways.
Our documentary team had grown to know the Khomani by working with them on various projects over many years.
Over the phone, the circumstances of Optel’s death sounded ominous.
The grieving Khomani told us that they believe police hunted Optel down like an animal.
We packed up our cameras and drove to the Kalahari to find out what had happened.
When we arrive at Optel’s vigil, the tension in the Kalahari is electric.
Our contacts among the San say that Optel's death seemed like murder
The tracks say it was one man that chased Optel. The police said that there were two – Lieb and his colleague and that both of them shot. Which is unlikely, as there are only two sets of tracks – not three, or four. And one comes back, and that’s the one that hunted Optel.
Over the last five years, five San have died violent deaths here. Their murders have not been solved, and now Optel has been shot.
Since ancient times, San hunter gatherers occupied the vast South African landscape. They are the First People of Africa, and of all humanity.But everything changed when colonists arrived on our shores.The San were declared hostile, untameable savages. Bounties were set, and they were hunted down.Survivors were enslaved or scattered and killed by foreign diseases.
European museums displayed the bodies of the San who were killed during the genocide.
For us, seeing Optel in his coffin was a chilling echo of the genocide of the San in Southern Africa.The #Khomani are South Africa’s only San culture to have survived this genocide, with unbroken links to their ancestral heritage.
The Khomani are a tiny, fragile community living here on the outskirts of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park that straddles South Africa and Botswana
Optel Rooy was much-loved and respected by the #Khomani as a master tracker. He was nicknamed ‘COBRA’, for the way he moved in the bush.Optel grew up in the wilderness as a free hunter-gatherer.
But when he was caught poaching in the Kgalagadi Park, Optel chose to settle with the #Khomani, and he started a family.He became the leading trainer of young Khomani trackers.
But naturally he was a child that loved nature. He used to live from the veld. He was almost dead when we picked him up. That’s why we gave him the name Optel, because we picked him up. And so he operated with us until he became a game ranger and tracker. And so in nature conservation he grew up and became strong, as he always worked with me. That’s why it’s so heavy on my heart to bear witness to Optel’s passing.
Optel was one of our best trackers. A cultural man who came from the wilderness. A man who served in nature conservation who we could use best in tourism.
Optel didn’t disadvantage anyone. Optel didn’t rob anyone. Optel never put his finger in somebody’s eye.
He lies today under the ground. Because of injustice. Full of life. Hunted like a gemsbok. Must he lie there, innocent? That man who lies there, he lies there innocent.
After many decades living as dispossessed squatters, the #Khomani San won a historic Land Claim in 1999.VO 20: They received 37 000ha of formerly white farms and game ranches, and rights in the Kgalagadi Park …… because with the recovery of their land by the San … because of the possibility to rebuild their lives, the whole of South Africa becomes a richer place.
But at the centre of the #Khomani’s new lands was Witdraai police station, and the Molopo Lodge with its bottle store.
The cheap liquor sold at The Lodge creates mayhem for the #KhomaniAs in the rest of South Africa, life breaks down at the bottle store. Fights break out, knives flash in drunken brawls, and people get hurt -- and die.
They grab their needs inside the bottles. And I don’t want the bottle store here anymore. Because it’s become a problem for me. It’s now over-flowed into a bloodbath. I don’t want it in my community because they never used to live from it. They lived in nature, free in the wilderness. Other people became dominating over them.
The Molopo manager refused to be interviewed. He told us he doesn't like Bushmen, but their business is good
Much of the Khomani’s income is spent here on alcohol like this cheap but potent ginger beer.
Jacob Malgas and Ouma Lena still grieve over their only surviving daughter who’s head was pulverised next to the Lodge. Next to the lodge! Early in the evening. By who?
The police who are there, who must investigate these things and find the facts for us, they didn’t do it, and still have not done it. Not ever. They’ve never tracked down the correct murderers here.
Now Optel Rooy has been murdered... 300 metres from his home. Yet another unsolved murder in the area.
Dawid Kruiper and Elias Festus at the scene of Optel's killing. They were able to read the markings in the sand and had spoken to many who’d heard the gun shots
Then they hear the crack of a shot. It’s the first shot that smacks. Not through the air, but it hits something. You can hear that wet smack. It’s inside. It’s a death shot. Then they told us that while the lights were here, they heard there’s been a death here.
Over here the bullet caught him. From here he struggled and struggled through these three small thornbushes, struggling, struggling. Here he tripped , here he fell. Here is the blood stain. Here he lay
If you saw how that Bushman looked as he lay there … He was conscious. And he still pleaded, after he turned him over. He was alive. What did they do? He was alive. That’s why his eyes are open. If you’re conscious, then you look. Those people. He still pleaded. That’s why his eyes were open. But it is not for us to plead today
Emotions were running high. Ouma Gcuna alleged that Optel pleaded with his killer after he had been shot.
(Insert: A man was shot. What one can say is that) there couldn’t possibly have been justification for a shooting of a person even if a bottle store had been broken into, which apparently did not happen.
“But even if that were the case the law does not allow policemen to shoot a person who is fleeing.
Before we came to the fence, then I said to Gert, no man, the van is reversing. We had just crawled through the fence.
Then the van charged us. Lieb comes and grips me. That young cop grabs Gert. Lieb asks:Have you seen Honeyboy? We say: ‘We didn’t see him’. But then he says: ‘I want to shoot him dead’. Shortly thereafter he says to us again that if we can find out who broke into the bottle store, he will give us five hundred rand.
Earlier that day Optel had been collecting scorpions with a friend. On their way home as darkness fell, they made their regular stop at the bottle store tap to draw water for their families. But they were unaware the police were looking for suspect near the bottle store.
Me and my friend Optel were busy drawing water at the Lodge’s bottle store, where we always draw water. When we finished filling our cans, on the road back home to the Kalahari, where we live and we’d just gone through the gate, we saw the police van going in at the lodge’s bottle store.
Then they probably went to the tap. Then they charged down on us and we ran in different directions, him that way and me this way. Then I hear, just afterwards, shots.
And the next morning I heard the man was shot dead.. Because I’d run straight home. I was never so close where gunshots were fired. Except hunting wild game, but not people …
Optel's body was found in the sand here where he fell...several hundred metres from the bottle store, inside Khomani lands, close to his home.
Those are their mates. They are friends.
They are friends. They braai, eat and have fun, all of them. They are friends. They come now and braai and have fun. So that this type of thing can happen.
A tiny core of traditionalists like Optel and Ouma Gcuna are the guardians of the Khomani’s ancestral knowledge. They believe they are targeted because they practice the old ways and stand up for their rights.
He shot him because he knows he carries the knowledge. And they are against the people who carry the knowledge. We carry the knowledge. It’s not impossible that he will come and shoot me. Because he can’t stand me either. It’s true. Yes, it’s true. My people.
Ouma Gcuna told us her own father was killed by Witdraai police, right here behind the police station, in the 1930s.
That magistrate, he said to my father: A Bushman will never come with his clever stuff to me. If you open your mouth again I’ll kick you to death. Then he kicks my father. Kicks him in his liver, it’s shattered. Shattered. Shattered.
As my father fell, we stood back. Everybody stood up. The he says to them: Now you come. Pick him up and carry him.
The traditional Khomani have no faith in the local police. Witdraai police station squats in the centre of Khomani land - to them it’s a malevolent, paramilitary compound. From here, the San believe they are targeted for harassment … Witdraai police refused to be interviewed.
But the #Khomani people had no doubt who killed Optel.
Is there a reason the police wanted to shoot Optel.
Yes There could be a reason. Because, before that, there was a confrontation with the police at Brosdoring. Also on our land, but at Brosdoring side. Whereby this Lieb assaulted one of our San people..
Then he grabs the gun with his left hand and he chopped me against the head and the blood ran down. I stumbled backwards
and the other two policemen. Then they grab, Mr Liebenberg grabs me like this round my body, round my neck. Then I twisted under and out. When I was out, then he hooked me with his finger and I turned my head away – he hooked my nostril.
Then it bled again.
So far as it’s criminal it’s criminal, and departmental – it’s departmental. But before it gets bigger – at this stage I see ity as a small problem – that we will resolve through talking.
Dion took his allegations of assault and the Khomani’s grievances against the police to the Human Rights Commission in Pretoria.
When colonists first arrived in South Africa, Bushmen were using dagga, for cultural and medicinal purposes. To this day smoking dagga remains common practice among the #Khomani, but it is a major source of conflict with the police. South African police prioritise serious crime, but the Witdraai police seem obsessed with pursuing Bushmen who smoke dagga.
as a result of the dagga our people must now die (changed from annihilated). Many of our people, since the land claim, have died in terrible ways. And we want to try ourselves to bring an end to these things.
They went as far as to call the Scorpions, men, big men who grab us and punch us in the ribs and demand: You disgusting thing , where is the dagga? Because of the dagga, our people can’t suffer like this!
Then Inspector Liebenberg says to Capt De Weer, come let’s chase him
I run over the road. Then I see people looking from the shop. They scream. Then I stop and raise my arms and I ask them: Why are you hunting me?
Then he brakes to a stop right opposite me, his gun in his hand. Then he spins twice around me and speeds away, laughing. Gagaa Gagaa. Coward! Then I ran home, where I found the children. .
Just three weeks after Dion’s second alleged assault by Witdraai police, Optel was shot.
The so-called Scorpions were in fact police from Upington.
Something else bothers the community. There were unrepaired holes in the bottle store roof. They believe this was a trap.
Now they say Optel broke in to the lodge and they saw him on the roof. Now if they saw him on the roof, why didn’t they shoot him dead there? Now Optel goes through one, two, three fences. But the police are here around the place so far as that they could see him on the roof. How can Optel have run so far from them and through a lighted open patch when the nearest place is behind him, to the dune. Whereas the holes on the roof are at the back, closest to the dune..
As I reckon, they planned that night to shoot that man, to shoot Optel dead.
Because he acted so rough. He came at us so aggressively. As I hear, and as people say, he’s not finished. He’s coming again
To put it crudely – I have heard the word used, in one of the many allegations that have come from the community, that there’s still - it’s a terrible thing to say – that there’s still a word bandied around by some people in the area, called Boesman Jag. And it’s like a Bushman shot is the same as a Gemsbok shot. Which is clearly revealing of very very disturbing attitudes of regarding certain people as lesser people
Did Optel’s murder have anything to do with Dion’s complaint to the Human Right Commission?
they chase me, or shoot me dead. Because I can see the expression in his eyes. He swears at me with the gun in his hand. And he chases me again and I run away. If I ask him: What’s it about? … then they won’t answer me.
Now is he permitted to shoot Bushmen? He’s registered to shoot Bushmen. That’s what he will tell you.
What’s become of the police is something very dominating. They have not worked for our people. They work for the rich neighbouring farmers here amongst us.They didn’t work with the community here. That’s why they hunt and kill Bushmen like Springbuck.
After 10 years of democracy, some Khomani still believe the police have the authority to kill them.
A San symbol is our national coat of arms, and our motto is a San
But today, the Khomani still fear the very police who are meant to protect them.
I must walk with my weapon, because I am no longer safe. And I don’t feel safe anymore. Because the policeman who committed the murder walks around free. He walks around free.
Charges laid by the community against the police – there are dockets registered – and three of those dockets have been handed to the Independent Complaints Directorate.
Game and resources worth millions of rand have disappeared from the their lands. Not just the San are to blame. As the top tracker, Optel knew who was stealing the game. Did Optel know too much?
The Molopo bakkie was busy chasing Optel, when it hit this gully and got stuck. Because they chased Optel so fast they didn’t see the gully.
And what we think – this shell – the first shot is the fatal shot. There was a small break – and then these four shots fired after each other – klap klap klap. Then somebody runs and shoots those other shots here, to say that he fired five warning shots. Because if he fired five warning shots, they should all lie here, in one spot. And why is the other cartridge lying over there?
It’s tragic if you know how he joined us. The way in which he grew up with me and became a strong man and part of this community. Then it’s very heavy for us. For all of us.
Our hearts are very sore . We did live in peace. But we are heartbroken. We had to become slaughter animals – we didn’t know that. It’s a shame for us that the Bushman is worth nothing. That we are animals – wild animals. My people.
You don’t want to tell the government what they must do. You just want to see, you who are the community, who are a citizen of the country, you just want to see that the government truly investigated this case properly, and that they handled it with justice. This is what a person will say.
The government pays that man but they are not paid to wipe out Bushmen.
The man is buried … His murderers still walk around. I am afraid what can happen. Maybe the police want us to rise up and destroy the place, so we expose ourselves to danger.
Maybe we can chase the police out there and destroy the place. And expose ourselves to danger.)
Where the government promised us freedom – freedom. With three little blue doves. But freedom there won’t be again. Freedom is not there and will never be there again. And if it’s just on the Bushman’s side, then I don’t know.
But we haven’t known freedom. We haven’t seen it. We haven’t yet lived it. Four o clock in the morning our people must be kicked awake . Out of their sleep, and searched, as if they’re thieves and crooks.
FADE TO BLACKFADE UP OPTEL STILL FADE TO BLACK ROLL END CREDITS FADE TO BLACK ROLL POSTSCRIPT, SUPERIMPOSED ON OPTEL:
The only person arrested in connection with Optel’s death is SANNA KRUIPER, for hitting the police van with a broomstick while calling the Witdraai police “Murderers
FADE TO BLACK