They were shadow people, moving beyond the light of small fires on a winter dawn. There was no hint then that I was about to encounter one of the most extraordinary sights of my time in South Africa.
In this part of the country, winter is a cold, dry season that burns the veld brown. The ground is hard like flint and when the wind blows across the plains, dust covers the squatters and all that they carry.
I could hear digging, and coming closer I saw a woman hacking at the earth. Nearby other men and women were doing the same thing. They had old garden tools, machetes, pieces of stone, anything to make holes into which they placed pieces of plastic, tin and wood.
I asked the woman what she was doing. “We are hiding our shacks,” she told me.
Brace yourselves. Absolutely disgusting. pic.twitter.com/M1rwrZpMji
— Mufasa007 (@Mufasa0062) March 4, 2024
