Tshasa IMPORTANT DATES: BAFOKENG LAND BUYERS’ ASSOCIATION’S ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 28 /08/2011 NEXT TSHASA– DECEMBER 2011

INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Update on the 1 Mafikeng High Court case 999/08 Alienation of the 1 disputed Bafokeng Communities’ land by the Royal Bafokeng Nation Slowly and quietly, 1 Adolph Zietsman is arming his Bafokeng security Temporary justice 1 not celebrated in Chaneng and Robega Koko Semane is back from retirement

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Greetings to the 3 “Durkje we love and miss you” family DONATE OR REGISTER YOUR SUPPORT FOR THE LAND

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www.bafokengcommunities.blogspot.com

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Tshasa Phone: 073 443 5699—Thusi Rapoo 083 740 9297– Lucas Mekgwe E-mail: [email protected] www.bafokeng-communities.blogspot.com

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Update on the Mafikeng High Court case 999/08 All Respondents but the Baphiring Community have finally submitted their Answering papers, opposing the Bafokeng chief’s Application to have the land transferred and registered in Royal Bafokeng Nation’s title. Due to the passing of their legal representative Durkje Gilfillan, the legal guru who pioneered the current Bafokeng communities’ land claims, the Baphiring have had to reconstitute their legal team. They are expected to file their papers soon. Copies of the communities’ Opposing papers can be accessed at www.bafokeng-communities.blogspot.com.

Alienation of the disputed Bafokeng Communities’ land by the Royal Bafokeng Nation The Bafokeng Land Buyers’ Association is concerned about the continued illegal alienation of disputed land by the Bafokeng tribal authority (alias Royal Bafokeng Nation) with the blessing of both the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform and the Minister of Local Government

and Traditional Affairs. The land in question is in dispute in the ongoing legal cases at the Mafikeng High Court and the Land Claims Court. ‘The implication is that all productive claimed land under dispute will be alienated to whoever wants it without the claimants’ consent’, said

Lucas Mekgwe, chairperson of the Bafokeng Land Buyers’ Association. He cautioned that as parties to the legal dispute in Mafikeng, ‘the State, who is also the titleholder of the claimed land should be subpoenaed before the Courts for the deliberate flaunting of the claimants’ constitutional rights to land restitution and just administration’.

Slowly and quietly, Adolph Zietsman is arming his Bafokeng security company Under the erstwhile command of the former koevoet operative Adolph Zietsman, it has always been expected that sooner or later, the well financed Bafokeng security will have to be heavily armed. It was a surprise though to see the Bafokeng chief feeling insecure amongst ‘his people’ at the recent Dumela Phokeng

meeting held in April at Luka village. Surrounded by heavily armed Zietsman’s security, all located at various strategic points, it is clear that the chief is threatened and fearful of ‘his people’. ‘He is isolated and disassociated. If he thinks he is safe within his covert security force, he is wrong, he

is highly vulnerable. A leader’s safety can only be guaranteed when he is with and amongst his people. It is them that will give him protection. Not the security force or a small number of the rich who will be quick to abandon him when there is trouble. It is the very security force that will deal with him..’ warned Phistus Mekgwe, organizer of the Anti-Bafokeng Repression Campaign.

Temporary justice not celebrated in Chaneng and Robega -by Joseph Magobe On Monday of 25 July 2011 the Chaneng and Robega human rights activists while waiting to be tried at the Tlhabane Magistrate Court, were shocked by the prosecutor’s announcement that their case has been “withdrawn”. The accused had been waiting for 10 months to vindicate themselves as the case had been constantly remanded on account that “the

State is still investigating”. On 18 June, probably due to high stress levels caused by heavily armed police arrest, court proceedings, pains and illness, Kgomotso Rammutla was buried. The death of this young heroine invigorated Chaneng Youth Organisation to reaffirm their march against economic and environmental injustices, and their continued support for the

human rights activists’ trial. Kgomotso was one of the eight accused of public violence of 08 October 2010. She died untimely without tasting ‘freedom’, which has not been realized. ‘It could have been better if she died not a crime suspect’, sobbed a mourner. Unfortunately the reasons for the 08 October 2010 protest have not been resolved and this ‘begs for no question that more revolutionary action by Macharora is coming’.

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The Bafokeng Land Buyers’ Association will hold their Annual General Meeting on the 28th August 2011 at Mokgatle Lodge, at 10am. Members are expected to be seated by 9:30am and are therefore encouraged to arrive early for registration. Attendants are further requested to bring R30 for braai.

Koko Semane is back from retirement Koko Semane Molotlegi, the Queen Mother of the Bafokeng as the media and others likes to call her, returned from retirement to open the Dumela Phokeng meeting at Thethe High School (Luka) and the follow up Bafokeng Kgotha-kgothe at the Phokeng Civic Centre. People grumbled when she threatened at Luka that anyone who dare talk about succession to the Bafokeng’s chieftaincy, ‘o ta se bona’. She quickly clarified that she is not a witch as others will want to interpret that statement.. ’mara, o ta se bona’, she

reiterated. She said that people must not bother her son, the Bafokeng Chief, with their land claims. She informed the people that her son does not own the land under claim in the current Mafikeng High Court case, but that he is only holding the land for their rightful owners and that it is the Courts that will determine who the rightful owners are. At the Phokeng Kgotha Kgothe, her first salvo was that some people are spooks (ba tsamaya ba sule). She encouraged the meek and the powerless to learn from the biblical

story of David and Goliath, that David did not have to mobilize support to bring down Goliath. She advised people to stop mass demonstrations if they had issues. That they should approach ‘Goliath’ in their individual capacities and address issues in their mother tongues. She intimated her dislike for kids who could not communicate with their mothers in Setswana. In the end she instructed the poor Bafokeng people to start paying for their water supplies, starting in August.

The Bafokeng chief’s failed 2020 Vision under the spotlight -Writes Thusi Rapoo Many of the ‘Bafokeng’ communities that bought land from the boers in the mid 19th century had two common objectives in mind, to steer off white oppression and to provide for their livelihoods using their indigenous traditional systems practiced at the time. The current Bafokeng chief’s determination to destroy Bafokeng communities’ traditional systems has been questioned. Who has given him authority to corporatize and urbanize the Bafokeng? Who is actually ill-advising him? The Bafokeng communities are rural ‘communist’ settlements, peaceful, united, with no need for the chief’s urbanization programmes. Millions of rands have been spend and wasted on the failed 2020 vision, the utopian Bafokeng Master Plan and now the distant 2035 Plan which only seeks to

shift goal posts further away from beneficiation. The plans are likely to create dual economies for the haves and the havenots within the Rustenburg-Bafokeng region, with the former, a small minority of crooked local elites, earmarked to be the ultimate beneficiaries of the Bafokeng accumulated R30billion wealth. Chaneng activist Joseph Magobe summed it well that ‘the corporatization and urbanization of the Bafokeng into a cold capitalist machine at the expense of the poor and their local indigenous knowledge systems will bear devastating effects to local livelihoods. We have said before that if the chief was elected and not born, he would not have been re-elected on account of poor performance, wasteful spending, condonation of ecocidal practices by foreign multinational companies, disgraceful ignorance on the importance of green economy, poor

economic and political foresight, lack of service delivery, western tendencies, and his dictatorial and indifferent Khama/Mangope/PW Botha style of leadership’. Some people are adamant that the Bafokeng chief’s leadership is reckless and irresponsible, and could be charged and disposed in the court of law for violating (customary) laws. ‘Who wants 2035 when most of the concerned Bafokeng elderly would already be dead by 2020?’ Pointing to Ms Gillian Kettaneh and Nial Caroll in the Bafokeng report, Magobe lamented, ‘ comrades… 2020 Vision, the Masterplan, 2035 Plan are simply the World Bank’s grand plan to keep us quite and waiting while they loot our platinum wealth. The poor kaffir kaptein is most probably not even aware of it!’

Bafokeng singing pina-a-tswhene at Kgotha Kgothe meetings The voice of the voiceless people of Bafokeng has noticed the increasing numbers of ‘newcomers’ to the intriguing Bafokeng Kgotha-Kgothe meetings. More and more frustrated, out of work young people, attend the Kgotha-kgothe meetings to air their views on poor Bafokeng administration and its feudal leadership. What many of the ‘newcomers’ do not realize is that the concerns they raise have been told a zillion times before by their ancestors in the same Kgotha Kgothe meetings. ‘If you say we are going to vote, how did you determine the quorum in this meeting?’ asked Terry Bogopane. The reported case of Bogopane vs Mokgatlhe TSHASA

(+1955) questioned the Bafokeng chief’s abuse of authority to take decisions with only a handful of people attending the Kgotha kgothe. In more recent times, many organizations and interest groups have been formed within the Bafokeng to raise the very same concerns. When a group of disgruntled people tried to disrupt the recent Kgotha Kgothe of the 18th June, they were in fact repeating what had happened in around 1922 when a group of rebels took over Kgotha Kgothe proceedings from chief August Mokgatle. The point is that ‘newcomers’ must be aware that the royal family, with years of attendance to these meetings, knows exactly

the issues that will be raised, and now sees these Kgotha-kgothe meetings as venting sessions, a therapeutic exercise for hungry, poor ‘new grumblers’. ‘Ke kgwele se se mofatlheng..o nkutlwile..i feel better now’. Without addressing the real concerns raised, the family goes back to their usual business...exploitation. 'The best option for Bafokeng Kgotha-kgothe newcomers is for them to join and strengthen existing dissenting organisations advocating legitimate concerns within the Bafokeng bantustan', advised Thusi Rapoo, secretary of the Bafokeng Land Buyers' Association.

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Greetings to the “Durkje we love and miss you” family It was one of the most beautiful farewells one could ever imagine. So many contributed, every contribution was precious. This was a memorial to the life, the achievements of Durkje but also an expression of overwhelming love for Durkje. Our thanks and gratitude must go to you Chris Langeveld. You channeled our love for Durkje into a celebration of a life spent selflessly for those that needed it most, the dispossed and the wronged. Durkje is a diamond of many facets (I still cannot get myself to use the past tense). Sister to Imme and Janneke, Mother to Henry and Charles, Grandmother to Meagan and Grace, Mother in law to Rina and Naomi, care giver and champion to untold numbers of people. Every person at the service departed with a shared experience of this gift to the country she loved and made her own. The time line followed was of her service as an attorney. The Legal Recourses Centre (LRC) office in Pretoria is where the Law of Land became her specialty. None were surprised at her appointment as a Land Claims Commissioner. Many more were saddened when it became clear that the three year contract was not to be renewed. Testimonials there were aplenty from communities she had served in Limpopo and Mpumalanga and those of her Pretoria LRC days in Northern Province and North West. With the staff she so carefully recruited, a foundation was laid and lines of action were thrashed out that simply did not exist. The research they did and the results they achieved in but three years clearly demonstrated that they were on the right track, that progress in rural land reform was possible but, by its very nature, will be slow and difficult. Undaunted she returned to the LRC, this time in Johannesburg, to continue with her passion, Land Reform, as an attorney for communities that needed their claims taken forward. With no limitation on the communities she may assist, she answered calls from close to home to the

far reaches of Northern Cape, North West Province, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Cases that she had worked on before she was Commissioner came back to her still unresolved. Three days before admitted to ICU with double pneumonia, she was in Piet Retief taking forward claims she had nurtured as Attorney of Gilfillan du Plessis, after she retired from LRC. Her colleagues kept alive the hopes of many communities whose claims were still in progress. Standing there in the ICU cubical she had occupied for more than eight weeks, with her now cold body, I grieved for these precious colleagues and the communities whose hopes they had kept alive believing, as did we all, that it was but a question of time. For us as family it is a grievous loss, but we will recover. For they that desperately hoped for her recovery, that she will continue the work that is interrupted, I found her passing particularly cruel. But there were others at the memorial service that remembered another Durkje, the political activist, the municipal candidate, with her picture plastered across the ward she contested. (It was no surprise she did not win. The surprise came from a person of “the other side”. His words to me were “you wife did remarkably well”). They recognized, if not the face then the name. They so wanted Durkje to succeed. For our sons it was “that is our mommy”. They knew of this women that welcomed to our home, for a get together, the Delmas trialists (largest of the so called Delmas trials transferred to Pretoria) out on bail. When I and friends visited Pretoria Central Prison, with food parcels, the three denied bail, Durkje befriended their families, keeping open house for those that came from far. I recall a young boy, totally absorbed singing to himself, placing one after the other, the toy cars,

trucks, trains, whatever he found in the cupboards of our sons, in a line that snaked down the passage and into the lounge. Now a not so young man I wonder if he remembers those moments of tranquility away from home, with father awaiting trial in Pretoria Central Prison. Others at the service recall our visits to the townships to observe and report on acts of violence against individual activists and communities, to MP’s of the Opposition in the White Parliament. These MP’s were the protective umbrella we used to bluster our way through tight and potentially dangerous confrontations with the system. Still others recall Durkje’s work in the Pretoria Black Sash, and the relationships we developed with representatives of foreign Governments. A dear friend, and Chair of Black Sash, was detained at the beginning of one of the states of emergency of the 1980’s. A visiting foreign minister, of a leading Western Power, was asked by a small delegation, at a meeting in the embassy, to intervene on her behalf (he did just that, to be chocked off for interfering in the affairs of RSA). Imagine the amazement as he emerged into the full glare of TV cameras, followed by the delegation with Durkje and then I in tow! When was Durkje so heavily involved politics and unrest monitoring? When as housewife and mother she was studying law by correspondence. Henry was once asked “what work does your mother do”. The innocent young boy retorted “my mother doesn’t work”. Representatives of another land claim, that has been with Durkje for some time, were present at the Memorial service but, for lack of time, did not come forward to speak. I quote from a letter written by Durkje to the community representative. “Through research I am sure I have found the legal answer to enforce transfer of ……. (your communities) rights.” -Chris Gilfillan

DONATE OR REGISTER YOUR SUPPORT FOR The Association has finally opened up a bank account. Anyone who is interested in making a donation and or a contribution, of whatever nature, size or quantity, is much welcome to make a deposit into the following bank account:

Luka- Lucas Mekgwe - 083 740 9297 Thekwana- Gash Nape - 073 669 6710

Bank Name : Absa Account Name : Bafokeng Land Buyers’ Asso ciation Club Product/Account Type : Absa Club Account Account Number : 9253919619 Domicile Branch : Rusten Plaza Domicile Branch Code : 6590 Bank Clearing Code : 632005

Thusi Rapoo - 073 443 5699 or Mighty Makgatlha - 071 835 8023 or Carly Dibetso - 083 274 3747

The Association wishes to encourage members of the land claiming communities to register their commitment and support to their land claims with their respective Coordinators who will give them registration slips. Registration fee is R100.00. Please note that, from the records in our possession, the forefathers who bought the farms that are being claimed now, used to donate 2 pounds, sometimes 5 pounds back in the early 1900 for buying the land! Should you make a registration deposit into the above bank account please state your village name as reference on the deposit slip and when you have a chance, present the deposit slip to your Coordinator so that you are properly captured in the registration book. You may register with the following Coordinators at your respective villages: Chaneng-March Motene - 082 680 8803 Tsitsing -Phillemon Khunou - 071 481 3090 Mogono– Thusi Rapoo - 073 443 5699

Guiding Principles and Values In times of universal deceit, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act – George Owell Killing a person for no apparent reason is evil……...what is more evil is when good, fortunate men sit back and turn a blind eye to acts of tyranny - Moss Phakwe Good shall triumph over evil - the holy scripture You cannot fight the truth, the spear and shield for any revolution – Eric Mokuoa

At Photsaneng, the descendants of Makgatlha must call the following Coordinators who will give them details of the Makgatlha account:

Those from other villages/areas may just make the bank deposit and keep their bank slips for future reference. Please make sure that you state your village name as reference in the bank deposit slip. There has been a suggestion that, after the claim is won, those who registered before the claim is decided should be rewarded with a R1000.00. But it must be understood however that there will be equitable benefits to everyone like improved education support, health care facilities, acquisition of shares in the mines, quality jobs, more business opportunities, farming support, burial support, pension support, and more. The R1000.00 would be just to thank those who registered R100.00 on the claim. Only persons above 21 years of age may register. Young people, particularly those at High Schools and Tertiary, and many of those that are unemployed, are urged to motivate and encourage their elders to register for this very important cause which will change the peoples’ lives for the better! Again registration is R100.00 and anything above that is a donation, thank you! A special thanks to those that have already registered.

THE PLATINUM BELT