FRIDAY, 3.30PM
RESIDENTS of Bushbuckridge who are agitating to have the area incorporated into Mpumalanga from Northern Province today delivered a memorandum to President Nelson Mandela notifying him of their intention to take the border dispute to court.
“The people have resolved to donate R10 per family and business people from R100 and over to take the matter to court, because politically there seems to be no will from government to have the matter satisfactorily resolved,” the residents said in an open letter to the president handed on Friday to the Bushbuckridge police station commander for delivery to Mandela’s office.
Bushbuckridge Border Committee chairman Enos Maunye later told the cheering crowd that no force on earth would persuade them to drop their demand. “We don’t care about the ANC’s threats to forcefully incorporate us into the Northern Province, we will fight until the last person until we are incorporated into Mpumalanga,” he said.
Other civic leaders accused the ANC of reneging on a September 25, 1994 promise that the will of the people would be tested before any decision was taken on the border dispute. The crowd dispersed peacefully after the letter to Mandela was handed to police station.