The African National Congress Women’s League on Monday objected to court rulings evicting a family from ”ancestral land” in Limpopo and refusing permission for a matriarch to be buried there.
”The Tshivhula family has endured humiliation, harassment and loss of human dignity over the past two-and-a-half months since the death of their beloved mother, Mukumela Tshivhula, on January 27. She is yet to be buried,” the league said in a statement.
The league has noted ”with sadness” that, despite several attempts to find an amicable solution through negotiations with the landowners, there has been a ”deliberate attempt on the part of the landowners to frustrate the process”.
”It is also frustrating to learn that at every opportunity the courts have ruled against the poor family,” it said.
On March 28, the Makhado Magistrate’s Court issued an order giving the family 10 days to vacate their home located on the farm. This was the only home the family had lived in and the place that the deceased called her matrimonial home in the 1930s.
This is a gross miscarriage of justice and highlights ”the fact that our judiciary is still largely not transformed”.
The family is facing trying times, the league said. While they were still mourning their mother, who have since been refused burial on the farm, they were being ”forcibly removed from their home and ancestral land”, despite having lodged a claim to the land with the Land Claims Commission in 1998.
”The plight that the Tshivhula family is facing is an indication that the poorest of the poor will remain disadvantaged within the justice system and be forever locked within the cycle of poverty.”
The league intends lobbying other progressive structures across the country for the rights of farm dwellers and workers.
”We further condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the inhuman treatment being meted out to the Tshivhula family. We therefore challenge the justice system to review the verdicts of the courts in the matters that the Tshivhula family is involved in.”
The league encouraged its members to support the Tshivhula family on Monday as they went to court to hear the verdict on their appeal against the decision to refuse burial for their mother. — Sapa