Marianne Merten
It was a bitter-sweet moment this week for 12 Cape Town families who finally received compensation for their homes and land lost to the Group Areas Act more than 30 years ago.
Bitter, because most of them cannot return to the homes they lost when the apartheid government declared they were not white enough to live in them. Sweet, because the democratic government paid them R953 000 in compensation.
The families – from Stellenbosch, Malmesbury and the northern Cape Town suburbs of Goodwood, Bellville and Parow – were forced to sell their properties in the 1950s and 1960s.
Margaret Fredericks is an elderly widow. She received R41 441 for the Goodwood home of her late husband. The family had to sell it at a quarter of the market price in 1967. Fredericks says her family was relocated to Maitland as the new owners moved into their home. The pain is still with her. “My house in Goodwood has sentimental value to me. No amount of money will bring it back to me,” Fredericks says.
For Brian Brown the compensation stirred memories of how he had to sell his in-laws’ Goodwood home a year after the Group Areas Act came into force. The house was sold for 1 250 in 1958 to the Community Development Board. This week he accepted the compensation on behalf of his wife, who remained silent and teary-eyed.
“It was particularly hard on the old folks. They were already in their fifties and they could not retire because of the financial strain,” Brown says. The R24 682 they received will be distributed among the family’s children so each of them receives a few thousand rand. Brown says there is nothing left of the past. “It [the house] has been sold and renovated by the new people. It’s no use to think about that now.”
George Hendricks and his wife Naomi were dispossessed of a 496m2 property in 1965. He now has been compensated with R43 035. Hendricks says although the money does not relieve the family of their hardships and pain, it is a godsend. “I believe this is a gift from God and prayers answered for all the hardships that we had because of the Group Areas Act.”
For the Hector family from Stellenbosch it was a sad day. William Hector died of cancer 10 months ago. The former teacher was forced to sell his father’s semi- detached Cape Dutch home on a 1 744 m2 property in Stellenbosch’s Borchard Street when the town was declared white in 1964. His son Edmund accepted the R238 079 on behalf of his mother and two siblings.
The Arendse family lost four properties in 1962 when they were forced to sell their properties in Bellville’s Binneman and Wellington streets. Catharine Arendse lodged the claim on behalf of herself, her siblings and the child of her late brother. They received R109 452.
All 12 families started the long road to compensation in 1995 when the sons, daughters and surviving spouses of those who were forcibly removed from their land lodged the claims with the land commission. Sunday’s awards are the third round of compensation in the Western Cape.
Land commissioner Wallace Mgoqi says the pace of compensation is picking up. “The pace is becoming so fast, it could overtake delivery capacity.” But he vowed more would follow despite difficulties with getting authorities, particularly in the Western Cape, to participate in the process.
“Some even have cheek. Whilst they got the properties for a song they will only release them at market value,” Mgoqi says.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki handed over the cheques to the emotional recipients. He said: “The government acknowledges money cannot compensate for the suffering of forcibly removed and dispossessed families, but financial compensation is a step towards justice.
“It says we can correct these injustices of the past, perhaps in a limited way, but we can. We can’t say we are building the new South Africa and leave many, many people carrying pain in their hearts. Part of the building of the new South Africa is to reduce that pain.”
Mbeki, on a three-day whistle-stop election tour of the Cape Flats, says the financial compensation is “giving a bit of a soul to the new South Africa” because people who were hurt during the apartheid years cannot be forgotten.
“Even so many years later we can feel the offence, the hurt, the terrible damage that was done, and to sit here today and participate in an occasion when something will be done is really to say: `As South Africans we can really overcome the problems that we have inherited.'”