An application for the mayor of the Lekwa municipality to repair a Great Trek memorial that had allegedly been damaged by the municipality was postponed in the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday.
The hearing, due to start on Tuesday, was set down to begin on May 22 and 23 next year.
This followed a dispute of facts after the mayor, Queen Radebe-Khumalo, said the damage to the memorial was accidental, AfriForum spokesperson Kallie Kriel said.
Kriel said the mayor, through an answering affidavit, said the damage to the memorial with a grader was accidental and that the memorial was being removed to be stored until an appropriate place for it was found.
”We are opposing their statement that the damage was accidental,” Kriel said.
AfriForum and the Standerton Action Committee are asking the court to order Khumalo-Radebe to rebuild the memorial, and in her personal capacity and that of the municipality be held responsible for the costs of the rebuilding.
The municipality and the mayor are opposing the application.
AfriForum and the committee took the matter to court after the memorial, built to mark the 150th anniversary of the Great Trek, was damaged in April this year.
Erected in front of the municipality building in Standerton, the memorial consisted of a large concrete slab with the tracks of an ox wagon set in it. It commemorates an event in 1988 when 13 ox wagons travelled through South Africa as part of Great Trek celebrations.
At the time of the incident, Radebe-Khumalo reportedly said the memorial ”means nothing to us”.
”It’s just a piece of cement with tracks. I do not even know where it comes from.” Radebe-Khumalo was quoted by newspapers as saying. — Sapa