{"id":10102,"date":"2013-09-07T12:25:16","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T12:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10102"},"modified":"2013-09-07T12:25:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T12:25:16","slug":"hounded-racist-winemaker-gave-money-to-coloured-girl-to-study-in-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=10102","title":{"rendered":"Hounded ‘racist winemaker’ gave money to Coloured girl to study in USA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Johnny<\/a>
Johnny Burger (standing, right) with his fellow accused Wilhelm Treurnicht in the Ashton Magistrate’s Court. Photo: Cape Times.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As more facts surface regarding the owner of Rietvallei wine farm, Mr. Johnny Burger, who had been driven to suicide by anti-racists and the media, the so-called perpetrator is starting to look more and more like a victim.<\/p>\n

In a glowing letter published in the Boland Gazette<\/a>, a local newspaper in the Cape, a young Coloured woman recounts how the winemaker donated money to further her studies in America. At the time her father was a worker on the farm who was treated with warmth and fairness by the same man accused by Rapport<\/em> of “beating a young Coloured boy into epilepsy”.<\/p>\n

We reproduce the letter here:<\/p>\n

The ‘Oom Johnny’ that I knew…<\/h3>\n

by Meriza Lakey<\/p>\n

The first time I met Johnny Burger, or Oom Johnny, as I called him, I was an embarrassed teenage girl. My father, who passed away four years ago, was a builder and worked for\u00a0Oom<\/em>\u00a0Johnny for close to a decade.<\/p>\n

After matric, I was determined to travel overseas and made the necessary arrangements to go to America. These plans were a little bit ambitious for a coloured, Afrikaans girl from a small wine community within the Western Cape. One Friday afternoon, my father told me to hop into his old, rickety\u00a0bakkie<\/em>\u00a0and we drove off to Rietvallei to see Johnny Burger.<\/p>\n

At the farm, my father introduced me to Oom Johnny and I remember meeting the tallest man I had ever seen in my life. My father was a pretty tall man himself, but Oom Johnny towered over him like a city skyscraper. My father explained to him that this was the daughter who was leaving for New York soon and if he, Oom Johnny, didn\u2019t have a few extra \u2018dollars\u2019 to give to me.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, this completely caught me off-guard and I thought I could\u2019ve just died. I remember poking my father in the hip and smiling shyly, as to say that we don\u2019t need any \u2018hold-outs\u2019. I was a proud teenage girl embarrassed at everything that my father did or say. Oom Johnny just smiled, walked over to his cabinet and drew 200 American dollars out of his drawer. I was shocked at how easily he gave the money, almost like an investment, in me.<\/p>\n

My father loved him, that\u2019s why he worked for him for over a decade. He always came home with some story of what \u201cJohnny Burger said\u201d or what \u201cJohnny Burger did\u201d. I smile now at how Oom Johnny was never known as just \u201cJohnny\u201d, his name was always followed by his surname and it\u2019s like I can see my father saying it right now. Oom Johnny was also the first to offer advice when we found out about my father\u2019s cancer.<\/p>\n

I remember visiting Rietvallei again after I came back from America. Oom Johnny spoke to me in English and I replied in my \u2018newly-acquired\u2019 American accent, much to his and my father\u2019s amusement. I remember him looking at me and I remember seeing the same look in his eyes, as I saw in my own father\u2019s eyes; that of a proud father.<\/p>\n

I can only tell you of the Johnny Burger I knew. I wanted to write this tribute to Oom Johnny, as my father would have wanted me to do. I can speak only of what I know and what he did for me and my family. And if that is testament to the kind of man he was, then to me, that was a great man.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0Meriza Lakey (daughter of Tommy Lakey)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As more facts surface regarding the owner of Rietvallei wine farm, Mr. Johnny Burger, who had been driven to suicide by anti-racists and the media, the so-called perpetrator is starting to look more and more like a victim. In a glowing letter published in the Boland Gazette, a local newspaper in the Cape, a young … Continue reading “Hounded ‘racist winemaker’ gave money to Coloured girl to study in USA”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5943,5804,5954,1818,5953,5952],"class_list":["post-10102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-anti-racism","tag-johnny-burger","tag-meriza-lakey","tag-racist","tag-rietvallei","tag-wilhelm-treurnicht"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Wilhelm+Treurnicht_Johnny+Burger_AshtonMagCourt.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10104,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102\/revisions\/10104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}