Shadley Nash
EZEKIEL MSIZI cast his steely gaze over the paddock where a dozen or more cows were being milked with hi-tech electronic equipment. “We want to come home. The white farmers’ time is up,” he said.
Msizi’s impatience signals growing discontent in the ranks of the Mfengu community over the fact that they are unable to occupy their old farms — even though they have been celebrated as the first group of displaced people to regain title to land that was expropriated from them under apartheid.
Sixteen years ago the white farmers’ cattle in the fancy paddock would have belonged to Msizi and other members of the Mfengu community who owned the land. Now, even though the community has regained ownership of the land, white farmers are still milking cows there in terms of a controversial leasing agreement.
The land was bequeathed to Mfengu people by Sir George Grey in 1841 for taking up arms on the side of the British against the Xhosa during the Sixth Border War. They carried out a vibrant subsistence farming life before the National Party government, in terms of its “black spot” removals programme, sent in the police to drive the community off to distant Keiskammahoek, an overgrazed resettlement area in the former Ciskei homeland.
They were one of the first displaced communities to get their land back, in a deal which took three years to negotiate and which was hurriedly sealed before last April’s election. The deal saw about two-thirds of the 8 000ha of plush farmland nestling in the foothills of the Cape Fold mountains returned to the community.
However, a year later the community has not yet managed to take back their land.
Kobus Pienaar, an attorney from the Legal Resources Centre in Port Elizabeth who acts for the Tsitsikamma Development Trust, says the frustration of the community is “understandable. This community is like a pressure cooker without a valve that can explode if the trust does not see to the allocation of land promptly.”
The trust consists of nine members chosen from the Mfengu community and seconded technical advisers. It is taking flak from many rank-and-file community members because of its failure to effect a programme to put the people back on their land.
In terms of an agreement brokered by the government, farmers and the Mfengu last March, the community received some 6 000ha, comprising 19 white-owned farms. An addendum to the agreement stated that the trust would allow the farmers to remain on the land until January 21 1995 and that it could enter into lease agreements with the farmers which would provide some R1-million a year in income for the Mfengu. This is at the centre of the community dispute.
The leases agreement gives the white farmers tenure for varying periods, but not for longer than 10 years. The idea behind extending the leases was that the Mfengu would have a regular cash flow to enable them to develop infrastructure as well as a development plan that would allow an orderly return to the land.
But for Msizi the solution is more simple than that: “They (the farmers) have to leave. We want to come back to the land of our forefathers”.
Plans are afoot for a community summit to be held next month, which will be mediated by a senior regional government official. The summit will attempt to resolve the growing tensions in the community and establish ground rules to allow the Mfengu to return home finally. — Ecna