By Joanie Bergh
“My truck was stuck in the mud outside Kroonstad when two white men stopped to help me. They offered me a place to sleep, woke me up with a cup of coffee the next morning, and helped me to continue my journey.”
When 33-year-old Mulalo Makhokha created this post on social media, he could never have imagined that it would spread like wildfire.
Only later would he hear it was Danie Minnaar, the chief director of Senwes, on whose farm he ended up on Tuesday night and who woke him up the next morning with a cup of comforting coffee.
Mulalo, a truck driver from the informal settlement of Venda, some 68km outside Louis Trichardt, then sent a letter to the Facebook group SA Trucker, who posted it on his behalf yesterday morning.
In it, he wrote: “I was stuck in Kroonstad with a very expensive load when two white men from Springbok farm and Deelpan farm helped me. Long story short – politics divide us, but the men showed me humanity and offered me a cup of coffee because it was very cold … God bless the men.”
More than 47 000 users liked the post within 24 hours, and it was shared nearly 6 000 times.
Personal experience
“I was very scared that night when my truck got stuck,” Mulalo, who has been a truck driver since 2017, told African Farming. “Years ago, a truck I was driving stood by the roadside, then the people who lived nearby robbed me and stole all my cargo. I lost my job after that.”
That is why this incident in the Free State meant so much to him personally, he related.
On Tuesday evening, he was on his way to transport diesel from Durban to Kroonstad when the truck’s tire got stuck in mud. Because of the recent heavy rains on the R34, the roads were muddy, and the new gravel laid there had not yet been properly compacted.
“It was after 8 p.m., it was pitch dark and very cold. I was afraid that I would be robbed again. But then a white man stopped at my pickup truck, and he asked: ‘Chief, what’s wrong?’ I then told him the truck was stuck and that I had a very expensive load. The man then called another man and said: ‘Let us help you.’
“But then it got late, and they suggested that I stay overnight at the farm while they make a plan with the truck.”
The two men who helped Mulalo were Minnaar’s two farm managers, Kobus van der Merwe and David Crawley.
Minnaar says they needed a specific pull rod to pull the truck out of the mud, so they borrowed one from his neighbour, Manie van Niekerk, late at night.
They worked throughout the evening to pull the truck out so that Mulalo could get back on the road the next morning.
“The man (Minnaar) woke me up the next morning and gave me a cup of coffee. I will never forget it…” said Mulalo. “It just made me realise again that not all black people are my brothers and not all white people are my enemy.”
A director and the truck driver
Gerhard Marx of Ekono Langplaas in Brits, who transports high-value commodity fuel and for whom Mulalo works, says they are very proud of him. “We are very grateful to Mulalo, and we get incredibly good feedback. He is one of our best drivers whom we entrust with big loads,” he said. “He called us and told us what had happened to the truck. It tells you something if the chief director of Senwes offers a truck driver coffee…”
Minnaar is reluctant to comment on this, saying only: “At the end of the day, it’s all about humanity.”
* Mulalo is a father of three children. He and his wife Murendeni met at school and later married. They have three children: A son, Mashudu, 11, and a 6-year-old twin, a son, Wamashudu, and a daughter, Shudufhadzo. He relates that Shudufhadzo was normal at birth but suffered a stroke at the age of three. Today, she is physically handicapped and unable to walk or talk.
“I take pride in my work, and I work hard to take care of my family,” he said.
