Ann Eveleth
Mothinya Molakeng (53) quit his job as an agricultural extension worker in 1994 to farm the land from which the former government brutally evicted his and 124 other families in 1978. He is still waiting.
The commission on land allocation, set up in the dying days of the National Party’s reign, agreed in 1993 to restore his community’s ownership of Doornkop farm, in the Ventersdorp district of the former Transvaal’s highly arable “maize triangle”.
Last year Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Derek Hanekom also approved the restoration. But Molakeng is still waiting, ekeing out a living in Mabopane township near Pretoria, a way from the dusty township of Ruigtesloot, north of Hammanskraal, where the army and police dumped them 20 years ago.
“We were prosperous on that land [at Doornkop]. We ploughed maize, sorghum, sunflowers, beans and chickens there. Then, at 9am, Wednesday, November 30 1978, our house was bulldozed flat by police and defence force reinforcements from Potchefstroom. They came in six trucks and made sure our house was removed in half an hour. They dumped us in Ruigtesloot – this barren, sandy place which is so small you can hardly plough,” he recalled.
Molakeng’s father died in 1994, waiting for restitution. His brother, who owned another of Doornkop’s 135 plots averaging 8,5ha each, also died before he could return to the land. The claimants formed a steering committee, which has met 40 times to reclaim its land.
Molakeng is the committee’s secretary, and has lived a “nightmare” over the past four years, which he has spent trekking from Mmabatho to Braamfontein to meet officials he believes hold the keys to his land.
“The government said we could have our land back. But when I first visited there in 1994, I found a Mr Terreblanche grazing his cattle there. The next time I went back, I found the North West Department of Agriculture had dumped squatters there. They brought them in with government transport, put up a pre-fabricated school and clinic, dug boreholes, laid pipeline, brought in tractors, implements and seeds.
“In early 1995, the agriculture MEC approved a grant of R3-million for these squatters to farm our land. The squatters said the government had done away with land ownership in Doornkop. A headman there said anybody who had R400 to give him can settle there. Now they have R106 000 in the bank,” said Molakeng.
North West agriculture MEC Rev Johannes Tselapedi had not responded to queries at the time of publication. But Molakeng said the problem started with Tselapedi’s ousted predecessor, Rocky Malebane-Metsing.
Department of Land Affairs Director General Geoff Budlender said the provincial agriculture department “had no authority” to settle people on the farm. However, some of the so-called squatters were also land claimants, tenants of the farm owners similarly evicted at the time of the Group Areas removal. “We couldn’t just dispossess [the tenants],” he added.
Budlender said this problem had been sorted out, with the identification of alternative land and approval of settlement grants for these claimants.
But a new problem had arisen. The land, like all “state land” outside the former homelands, is controlled by the Department of Public Works.
On June 2, regional public works official Thuys van der Walt told Molakeng that he and his fellow claimants would have to “buy back our land, this time from the government,” said Molakeng. “These people are dragging their feet. And they keep shifting the goalposts. For four years we have been fighting for this land and this is the first time they tell us we must buy back the land our fathers purchased in 1949,” he claimed.
Van der Walt said this was because the old commission on land allocation had “recommended that the people must buy back the land with a limited option period,” after which the land could be sold on the open market.
Although Budlender said these old recommendations were “irrelevant because they were made under a different framework before the new Constitution”, the Department of Public Works insists that such recommendations stand until they have been replaced by new recommendations.
But the department’s director of state property holdings, Andre Meyering, said his department had not yet been notified. “The matter was first brought to our attention in April this year by the provincial office of land affairs. Our regional office responded correctly,” he said.
Molakeng and other Doornkop claimants plan to air their grievances during a march on the North West government offices in Mmabatho next month.
ENDS