Give the land back, or develop it? Cato Manor presents the Land Claims Court with its first dilemma. Ann Eveleth reports
PENSIONERS Agrippa Cebekhulu (65), Albert Ngwane (67) and Johannes Dlamini (69) grew up side by side in a freehold section of Cato Manor known as Good Hope Estate, on the border of present-day Chesterville.
They played soccer together, went to school together and eventually raised their families as neighbours in what was once a cultural heartland in Durban.
“Cato Manor was one of the very few places our fathers were able to buy land in those days,” recalled a misty-eyed Cebekhulu. “Our mothers and fathers were good neighbours who felt the pleasures and pains of life together. When someone died, we all attended the funeral. If you had a party, there was no need to send out invitations.”
Cebekhulu was reminiscing with his former neighbours this week during a break in South Africa’s first Land Claims Court hearing tasked to decide between two pillars of the new South Africa – land restitution and housing – which are in conflict in Cato Manor.
Cebekhulu’s fond childhood memories soon gave way to the familiar pain and anger so easily evoked among former Cato Manor residents. “Our happiness ended with the Group Areas Act,” he said wistfully.
The three men were in their 30s when the government declared their fathers’ land a “white” area, piled their families into trucks and dumped them in surrounding – and separate – black townships.
“Our fathers were never compensated for that land. The police just picked us up in trucks like animals with guns at our backs,” said Dlamini.
“When you have a family, you try to prepare a nest egg for your children. Can you imagine the pain of having that taken away? Some of our fathers couldn’t take it, became weak and passed away,” remembered Ngwane.
More than 30 years after their “extended family” was severed by apartheid, the three men have come together in a new struggle to regain the lost land of their fathers. They are only three of the estimated 160 000 people uprooted from Cato Manor by the Group Areas Act and other draconian legisation, and they are among the 200-odd claimants most determined to reclaim the plots “where our umbilical cords are buried”.
These 200 claimants – out of more than 2 500 land-restitution claims registered in the area – spent this week trying to convince the Land Claims Court’s first official hearing to reject an application by developers to prevent them from claiming back their land.
The Cato Manor Development Association represents the national Housing Board and the provincial and local governments’ development interests in the area. It wants claimants to be forced to settle for other land or financial compensation for their losses.
“We think the claimants can be accommodated within the development itself, although a successful application would prevent them from receiving the exact land they lost,” said the association’s land manager Dave Smiley.
The association argues its plans to build about 30 000 low-income houses and other developments in the area over the next five years represents a greater public interest than does restoration of land rights nullified under apartheid legislation.
While most claimants have not officially opposed the association’s application in terms of Section 34 of the Land Restitution Act, the issues for those who have are complex and emotionally charged.
Some claimants – like Cebekhulu, Ngwane and Dlamini – say they want to return to live on the land that was stolen from them. Ngwane, for instance, says it will decrease his bus fare by two-thirds – a significant saving for a pensioner.
Others, like 54-year-old Ganesh Rampersaad, say they are afraid of being “robbed” a second time. “My father passed away shortly after the Group Areas Act was passed. Before he died, someone offered to buy our house and the land where we grew vegetables for market for R50 000.
“The government refused to pass the estate into my mother’s name after the Act came in, and then forced her to sell for R7 850. After the bond payment and rates, I think she got R2 000. What can you do with that?”
Like so many forced-removals victims, Rampersaad’s life was fundamentally altered by the eviction: “We had to move into a dark rented basement in Chatsworth. We lost our market income. Half my salary went to rent, and we had to split up the family because the landlord wouldn’t take all of us. My mother died soon afterwards, and my life was taken up with paying the rent,” he said.
Rampersaad said he was forced to delay marriage until the age of 37 because he couldn’t afford a home. He has had to borrow money to send his eldest child to technikon.
“Now the association says it wants to build low-cost housing on my land, but their plans show it is an industrial site. Maybe my family could form a consortium and sell it for R200 000, but how much compensation are they going to give me?”
Smiley said the problem the association faces if the application fails is how to proceed with the R130-million Reconstruction and Development Programme contract the association has with the provincial government.
“Many of the objectors participated in the forum which created the association. A particular vision for the area was agreed to, and we’re now trying to implement it. We are undertaking the biggest inner-city development in the world, and it is impractical to restore the land to its previous uses.”
l The hearing has been adjourned to January 20.