Flippie Engelbrecht has been blind ever since he had to have surgery following an alleged assault by a farmer.
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Robertson - Every day Flippie Engelbrecht walks the 10 metres he has memorised to his sister’s shack at the bottom of a hill in Kanini, Robertson.
Engelbrecht has been blind for five years – ever since he had to have surgery following an alleged assault by a farmer and his farm manager.
He also lost his hands after he had an epileptic seizure and rolled into an open fire. Severe burns forced doctors to amputate his hands.
He has also suffered from epileptic seizures since his alleged assault in 2008, for which he is taking medication.
The owner of a wine estate outside Robertson and his farm manager will appear in the Ashton Regional Court on July 31, charged with assaulting Engelbrecht, now 19.
Engelbrecht and his father, Flip, opened a case against the two men in 2008, but that case was withdrawn.
The farmer’s lawyer, Jaco Krouwkam, has denied the allegations, calling them “false and baseless”.
Unable to work, Engelbrecht lives with his parents and older brother in a two-metre by four-metre shack in Kanini informal settlement.
At 5am, the teen’s new cellphone’s alarm wakes his family before his mother, Katrina, goes outside to start a wood fire for coffee.
The shack is cramped and filled with the smell of wood smoke. On a cord strung under the sheet metal roof hangs laundry. On a hook on the wall is his father’s suit. On a small table there is instant coffee and three vetkoek for dinner.
This week, Engelbrecht’s parents have seasonal farm work, and have to leave early.
His father is helping to prune vines and leaves at 6am with his mother. She is also working on a farm, but Engelbrecht is unsure what she is doing. “It’s farmwork, not housework,” he says.
After his parents go to work in the morning, his 16-year-old sister, Sanna, arrives. She is pregnant and not in school.
By 8am, Engelbrecht is installed on a ledge outside Sanna’s house while she cooks and cleans.
“Kanini isn’t a nice place,” he says. “I have no friends here. I only have my mother and my little sister to talk to. My heart is sore. I want two hands and my sight back.”
Without friends, he tries to listen to as much music as possible during the day on a portable radio. But without electricity, he has to limit listening time because of the expense of buying batteries.
Engelbrecht receives a disability grant of R1 250 a month.
Besides the radio, he has little to do during the day.
“I have to stay out of the direct sun,” he says.
“My father says I can get attacks any time.”
His new phone was given to him by Carina Papenfus, the secretary of the Freedom Trust, an NGO that works with farmworkers and their families. Papenfus is also the family’s legal adviser in the case against the two men.
She gave Engelbrecht the cellphone that now hangs around his neck in a small black pouch, so that she could get in touch with him and now calls him every evening. When it rings, one of his relatives answers it for him.
Following the alleged assault, Engelbrecht, who was a student at Vergesig Primary School at the time, underwent what Papenfus calls “emergency surgery” at Tygerberg Hospital.
Afterwards he went blind.
In 2009, he started at Pioneer School for the Blind in Worcester. He says he enjoyed school, made friends and particularly enjoyed the woodwork classes.
But after the mid-term holidays he didn’t return. The school, says Engelbrecht, was too expensive.
“My father told me, ‘No my son, you can’t go back there. It’s too expensive,’” he says, choosing his words carefully.
He is seated on a plastic crate outside his sister’s one room-house in the informal settlement.
The days of waiting have taken their toll on Engelbrecht, says Papenfus.
“When I ask him what he thinks about when he sits outside, he says he relives the assault in his mind over and over,” she says.
jan.cronje@inl.co.za
Cape Times
