When one farmer called for help, the country banded together, and the fire-stricken regions of the Eastern Cape were overwhelmed by the help from across SA thanks to one farmer’s initiative. But Werner Heyns, the general manager at Pabala Private Nature Reserve, refuses to take credit for the 150 farmers who have benefitted from the donations, saying the flood of donations was down to one simple reason. “If our farmers fold, our country folds.
I think more and more people are realising that simple truth, and they want to help where they can. But two weeks ago, after seeing several farmers in his vicinity struggling with drought conditions, brought on by persistent below average rainfall, he put out a call for help. The first response came on 5 January 2026, from 900km away when an anonymous farmer from Welkom, Free State, offered bales of feed.
Hours later, Tannie Joey van Heerden from Brits, north of Pretoria, offered 900 bales of lucerne, and somewhere in between Oom Chris van Rhyn, from eMalahleni in Mpumalanga, offered R10,000 to help with transport costs. “My Facebook exploded and I was inundated with people wanting to get involved and looking for ways to send help. I did not really know any of these people and the response was truly overwhelming,” Heyns said.
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Three days later disaster struck. Wildfires spread across the region between Kouga and Nelson Mandela Bay, leaving farm houses and other structures in ruin, and burning what little vegetation the drought had not killed to ashes.
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