Niki Moore
James Mthembu is a frustrated man. For five years, this tribal elder from the Mbila community in Sodwana, on KwaZulu-Natal’s unspoilt tropical coast, has been trying to get permission to build a small tourist resort on Lake Mgobozeleni.
Sodwana falls within Maputaland, advertised extensively by government planners as the next El Dorado for tourism. But the local people are a little more cynical.
“We were told five years ago that tourism was going to bring the golden egg,” complains one elder. “But where are the golden eggs? We are not seeing any tourism.”
His gripe is well-founded. Although the region has seen extensive proposals, tourism development is almost invisible.
To understand why things take so long, one has to take time to unravel the complicated question of land ownership in Zululand. Enormous areas are part of the Ingonyama Trust. This land was given by the National Party government to a trust administered by King Goodwill Zwelithini in a controversial agreement just before the 1994 general election.
Rural communities that live on trust land are allowed to occupy it, but may not change the ownership or the use of the land without permission.
The Mbila tribe, which occupies the land around Mgobozeleni Lake, is subject to the laws governing trust land. In fact, almost all the land that has been earmarked for tourism falls either under the Ingonyama Trust or the KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Services, and is tied up in complicated bureaucratic red tape.
The provincial government passed a law in 1995 – the Provincial Development Act – which is intended to cut through the tangles. However, no one told the people it affects most, and many tribal leaders are still using outdated legislation to pursue their aims.
This is exactly what happened to Mthembu and his Maputaland Tourism Alliance. He took his application to a tribal court, which took it to Ulundi, which took it to Durban. At about that time, the old KwaZulu homeland government was restructured, and the departments through which Mthembu had been working were replaced by regional councils.
While he was waiting for a non-existent government department to deal with his application, the Lebombo spatial development initiative earmarked Sodwana Bay and Mgobozeleni Lake as major tourist attractions. The attention of developers was drawn to the area, and Uthungulu Investment Holdings came on the scene.
The chair of Uthungulu Investment Holdings is Musa Myeni, the Inkatha Freedom Party candidate for Gauteng premier in 1994, who now owns a string of small businesses. As a member of the Zulu royal family, Myeni approached the chiefs of Maputaland and persuaded them to sign over development rights to his company.
“Our company is a black empowerment company that is trying to help the local people get involved in tourism by bringing together the developers and the custodians of the land,” he said recently.
But Owen Green, chair of the Ingonyama Trust, says: “The chiefs don’t actually own the land … Any proposed development has to go through the trust.”
Uthungulu has apparently approached Mthembu’s community with a plan to assist the community to secure a lease through the trust and then introduce a developer, for which Uthungulu will take a finder’s fee.
Mgobozeleni Lake is being regarded as a tourism development node with great potential. “The community wants to put up a little campsite by the side of the lake,” says a community researcher, “but in the meantime the place is being offered to people as a new Club Med or a Sun City. The community’s little application doesn’t stand a chance.”
But again no one has told Mthembu. No one has bothered to tell the Maputaland Alliance that there are plans for a huge hotel on its doorstep, with all the potential pros and cons for the community.