Park
Sechaba ka’Nkosi
The government’s land reform programme may be challenged in the Constitutional Court by two Northern Province clans.
The Mhinga Traditional Authority, acting on behalf of the Maluleke and Vanwanati clans, cannot reclaim lost land under the Restitution of Land Rights Act because they were dispossesed before 1913. The Act confines claims to individuals and groups who lost their land between 1913 and December 1998.
The clans were forcibly removed from land allocated to the Kruger National Park in 1905. Their attempts to persuade the Department of Land Affairs to accept their claim have so far failed.
The Mhinga campaign is led by Chief Shilungwa Mhinga, an attorney who gave up his flourishing legal practice to focus his energies on leading the clan.
To argue its case, the Mhingas have compiled a comprehensive dossier detailing the dispossession of their land from 1905.
It includes an official interview in July 1906 between its then chief, Sundhuza Mhinga, and the Native Location Commission, which drafted the 1913 Land Act. At that stage the clan owned more than four million hectares of land stretching from the current northern borders of the Kruger National Park from the Shingwedzi River in the south to the Limpopo in the north.
“The Mhinga tribe has lost not only its land, but also its kingdom and has suffered prejudice as a direct result of the discriminatory legislation and practices of both the British and the National Party reigns,” says Mhinga.
They plan to use the sections of the Kruger Park they want returned to them to build empowerment ventures that will employ most of its 300 000-strong members.
Mhinga says fierce lobbying has failed to sway the government, leaving the clans with very little option but the courts. He says that while the clans do not want to take a government they voted for to court, their patience is wearing thin.
“Our hopes are now on the Constitutional Court, which has to accept the fact that dispossession and forced removals in South Africa started early in the 19th century. To be precise, they started just after the Anglo-Boer War,” says Mhinga.
The tribe has written petitions to political parties and the British consulate to highlight their plight. Next week Mhinga plans to launch a final attempt to lobby parliamentarians in Cape Town.
He is specifically planning to seek sympathy from the Pan Africanist Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party. He says he will lobby the African National Congress to a lesser extent.
Mhinga says the clans have already drafted business plans that would be controlled by a registered tribal trust consisting of 15 members representing the clans’ villages and organisations.
The Ministry of Defence has allocated a former South African National Defence Force landing strip to the tribe to kick-start its ventures.
“This province is the most depressed in the country. We have unemployment running at something like 90%,” explains Mhinga. “We have identified ecotourism as a potential money-spinner in line with the resolutions of the Presidential Jobs Summit.
“We have already identified the southern portions for hotels and other parts for ventures such as lodges.”
Land affairs Director General Geoff Budlender argues that the Constitution recognises 1913 as the cut-off point for land claims to avoid a situation where different groups claim the same land for different reasons.
“We are puzzled because we don’t think the Constitutional Court can rule the Constitution unconstitutional,” he says.
ENDS