They are completely surrounded by a Defence Force battlefield, but the Khosis refuse to move. Stefaans Brummer reports on a land dispute involving the ANC, the army and the residents
A TINY Northern Cape community clinging to what is left of its ancestral lands in the middle of a South African National Defence Force battle school has found itself at the heart of a showdown between military interests and ANC policy.
Defence Minister Joe Modise this week found himself caught between his generals and the Ministry of Land Affairs over the fate of 30 to 40 Griqua families — the Khosis — at the Lohatla battle training school north-west of Kimberley.
The land dispute, inherited by Modise from the era of forced removals under the apartheid government, may become a major test for the defence minister and his deputy, Ronnie Kasrils.
At the centre of the dispute are the Khosis, who have so far resisted all attempts to move them from their remaining land, which is completely surrounded by the battle school. Thousands of other families, mostly Tswana, were forced out over the years: many now want to return.
At stake for Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom and the Northern Cape ANC is the credibility of ANC assurances that people’s legitimate claims to land will be honoured.
Pitted against them is the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), which stands to lose what is said to be the second largest battle-training school in the world and its investment in the area of about R90-million.
Caught in the cross-fire is the new Ministry of Defence, which this week said it had taken no stance and first needed to study the situation. As a first step, Kasrils was to accompany Hanekom on a fact-finding mission to Lohatla yesterday.
Ministry representative Muff Andersson said a Kimberley Supreme Court application, launch-ed by the previous Defence Ministry to effect the removal of the remaining Khosis people from Lohatla and which was to have been heard next month, had since been postponed to December to allow Modise time to study the situation.
Hanekom said this week the application for the Khosis’ eviction had been “a decision of the old regime. It will have to be reviewed and seen in the context of new government policy, which respects people’s rights, guarantees against forced removals and guarantees security of tenure”.
He gave assurances the Khosis community would not be removed against their will and agreed a court-ordered eviction would be tantamount to a forced removal. “If the community agrees as a result of negotiations to relocate, that is in order, but I want a negotiated settlement between all parties involved.”
Regional secretary general of the ANC in the Northern Cape, William Steenkamp, said the SANDF had “no right” to interfere in the area claimed by the Khosis community and reiterated the right to return to the area of about 80 Khosis families who moved voluntarily or were forcibly removed in 1992 and thousands of Tswana families who were forcibly removed to the former Bophuthatswana in 1977.
He said “harassment” of those Khosis families who remained — on grounds that their classification as coloured, meant they could not be relocated to Bophuthatswana — began in September 1992.
The SANDF had offered the 125 families remaining houses near Postmasburg, outside the battle training area — but only 15 agreed to go, Steenkamp said.
He claimed the army had then moved in and broken down houses, the community’s church and school buildings, and destroyed water pumps. Under duress and enticement more families followed the 15 who had left voluntarily, and only about 40 remained.
In May last year, Nelson Mandela met community leaders and pledged the ANC’s support in their struggle to stay on the land. Mandela also met then state president FW de Klerk to plead the Khosis’ case, Steenkamp said.
He said the army still barred the Khosis in Lohatla from using exits to the nearest town, Danielskuil, about 30km away, and they had to use a detour involving travelling more than 200km.
SANDF representative Lieutenant-Colonel Margie Neethling said no details could be given on the army’s position, as the matter was under investigation by the ministry. But sensitivity was such that media were prevented from access to the community.
Neethling said Lohatla was the army’s only training terrain where joint battle excercises with tanks, mortars and long-distance artillery could be done. She said that since 1989, 162 000ha of state land had been vacated by the SANDF.
The National Land Committee’s Brendon Pearce, which has been acting on behalf of the Khosis and the disposessed Tswanas, said: “The SANDF must move out of there.”
In a submission by the dispossessed communities before the Advisory Commission for Land Allocation, a story unfolds of a once-thriving Tswana society that in the 1960s was about 10 000-strong. “The removal impoverished the community. Not only were possessions and stock lost in the relocation, but human lives too. It was said that ‘the children died like flies’ when the people were trucked (to Bophutatswana in 1977).”