On 19 June 1913 the Native Land Act passed by the minority white Union of South Africa regime became law. The Act limited African land ownership to just 7 percent. In 1994 the democratic South African government passed the Restitution of Land Rights Act to provide for the restitution of rights in land to persons or communities dispossessed of such rights after 19 June 1913 as a result of successive discriminatory laws.
In this extract from his book A Desire to Return to the Ruins, LUCAS LEDWABA documents the struggle of a community that’s still struggling to get its land back under the democratic dispensation
19 November 2019.
A WhatsApp message drops on my phone in the late morning.
‘Elders from Limpopo border..Tshikundamalemand Mutele communities are staging a seat in Limpopo LEDET MEC offices in Polokwane demanding the withdrawal of the Matshakatini Nature Reserve…’
The sender goes on to explain that the land where the nature reserve is supposed to be located, was successfully claimed back by the community.
‘The Land claims commissioner granted the community full restoration. There was no objection from Ledet (Limpopo Department of economic development, environment and tourism) of the then department of forestry citing to the continued use for the land as the nature reserve. Only SANDF objected requesting the community to leasing them the eastern portion of their land which the community agreed to.’
The sit-in is one of the numerous measures undertaken by the community in a bid to force the authorities to act on their demands. Just a month earlier, members of the community travelled the 100km from villages near Gumbu in minibuses and bakkies to the N1 highway – a busy carriageway linking South Africa to Zimbabwe and the SADC region.
There just after the Baobab Plaza, about 38km to the town of Musina they barricaded the busy road with rocks, disrupting traffic. It was yet another desperate cry by the community for the authorities to at least listen and then act on their demands to be granted full access, control and ownership of thousands of hectares of land restored to them through the land restitution process 14 years earlier.
‘The N1 between Louis Trichardt and Musina at Bokmakierie, just north of the Baobab Toll Plaza, has been cleared and reopened after protestors had barricaded the national route with rocks. The exact cause of the protest has yet to be confirmed by police but some reports indicate that it might have something to do with a land dispute by the Madimbo community.’ (Zoutpansberger, 2019)
Two decades earlier, in September 1999 more than 1000 community members marched on the SANDF army base at Madimbo in protest against the slow pace of the restitution process in a report by the African Eyes News Service. ‘Seven members of the community were charged with trespassing, public violence and malicious damage to property after the September 1999 invasion and have been to court nine times already.’ (Service, 2001)
The report further highlighted the community’s frustration with the land claim process, quoting Gumbu Land Claim Committee chairman Nelson Masikwa saying that the community wanted their land back because it was fertile and had access to water from the Limpopo river. ‘The people are troubling me. They want their land…we met the land affairs minister (Thoko Didiza), but it’s been two years now and nothing has happened.’ (Service, 2001) In the report Land Claims project officer Miyelani Nkatingi said they were to hold a final inspection of the area before coming to a decision. ‘We want to be convinced that it would be feasible to restore the community to the land, then we will approach the SANDF (South African National Defence Force).’ (Service, 2001)
By 2019, with 20 long years having passed since this ‘invasion’ of the SANDF base by members of the Madimbo community little had changed. Although the land had been finally restored to them on paper, in practice, the land was still out of bounds for the community and the battle was heating up. In December 2018, the Gumbu community sent a scathing memorandum to the government.
But most importantly they made a passionate, practical case about how the failure by government to address the outstanding administrative glitches on their land claim was further exacerbating the poverty afflicting the rural community.
‘Our African people are already living in hell before the judgment day arrives,’ the community charged in the opening paragraph of the memo addressed to the office of Limpopo province premier Chupu Mathabatha. (Association, 2018)
In the memo, the Vhembe Communal Property Association and residents of villages under the Mutele and Tshikundamalema traditional authorities also expressed despondency at the indifference with which various arms and departments of the state had reacted to their pleas since their land claim was successfully validated and concluded in 2004.
But most importantly they made a passionate, practical case about how the failure by government to address the outstanding administrative glitches on their land claim was further exacerbating the poverty afflicting the rural community.
The reference to hell reflects the agony of a people, for land is generally revered as the source of life, a heaven on earth which if well looked after and worked on, could provide the prosperity associated with heaven. But alas, this statement by the people of Vhembe, Mutele and Tshikundamalema says much about what the people’s experiences with the land then.
‘Unbearable and unbelievable amount of poverty and sufferings in a new dispensation is worse than that of prison or war zones,’ the memo continued. (Association, 2018)
The Madimbo Corridor, land located south of the Limpopo river between the village of Masisi along the R525 and east of the commercial farming and holiday village of Tshipise known for its hot water spring resort – is a land of contrasts in many ways.
It’s home to a community of small scale commercial and subsistence farmers, villages of homesteads located on small parcels of land and a military base keeping an eye on movement between the area and the neighbouring country of Zimbabwe just across the river.
The river marks the international border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Madimbo Corridor is also bordered to the east by the Kruger National Park. In 1996, the Vhembe CPA, on behalf of the Mutele and Tshikundamalema communities lodged a claim on 27 000 hectares of the land in line with the Restitution of Land Rights Act 22 of 1994. A series of forced removals dating back to the 1930s right into the early 1980s by the white minority government which imposed itself on the people since the late 1800s, had led to the scattering of communities that once lived along the fertile banks of the Limpopo river further inland onto barren land.
The declaration of the Limpopo river as the international border between what the colonial rulers called Southern Rhodesia [Zimbabwe] and South Africa also had a major impact on forced removals in the region. In 1968 the SA Defence Force occupied part of the land along the Limpopo river to counter the threat of anti-apartheid guerrillas using the area to infiltrate into the country. Later on the military also began using the area as a training zone. This has continued even after the restoration of the land rights to the Mutele and Gumbu communities in 2004.
*A Desire to Return to the Ruins deals with the issue of land reform and restitution in post-Apartheid South Africa. The book is available at selected bookstores countrywide. See below links for details
A Desire to Return to the Ruins, by Lucas Ledwaba
https://www.loot.co.za/product/a-desire-to-return-to-the-ruins/fprj-7779-g900
