The disadvantaged indigenous and rural communities have a duty and responsibility to dismantle or replace the government of the day with a responsive and listening government, the National House of Traditional Leaders said on Sunday.
Chairman for the house Mpiyezintombi Mzimela was speaking at the inauguration of AmaGqunukhwebe tribe’s Chief Zwelimjongile Kama at Qibira Great Place in the Eastern Cape.
”We traditional leaders should be steered to take over the leadership of the political, economical and developmental struggle in this country,” he said.
He said traditional leaders had all along been hoping that the government was serious about finding an amicable solution to the problems they were faced with.
”But now it has become clear that the government is not prepared to find a solution, but is hell bent on getting rid of traditional leadership,” he said.
Mzimela said after 1994, they hoped for the better change and hoped that to take the centre stage in helping the government in addressing the massive backlogs.
”To our surprise it looks like our government is hell bent on following the colonialists in making sure that the institution was annihilated once and for all in the face of the earth,” Mzimela said.
He said as a result of the government’s failure to recognise the powers and functions of traditional leaders, African languages and heritage faced extinction because Africans in South Africa were beginning to have confidence in foreign languages and forgetting about who they were.
”African people can restore their culture only if our parliament compels people by means of legislation to use African indigenous languages in government and in workplace,” he said.
Mzimela also said the government was taking a Eurocentric position on rural and economic development issues, which resulted in South Africa becoming a replica of Europe with no past of its own from which we can learn and get inspired.
Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) president, Chief Patekile Holomisa, said traditional leaders and rural people should forge forces and oppose to the new land bill as it required people to use their land as a security to access housing loans from financial institutions.
”This bill will render rural people landless and all the land will be owned by banks,” Holomisa, who is also an ANC MP, said. – Sapa