08 September 2011

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to be tried at the Tlhabane Magistrate Court, were shocked by the prosecutor’s announcement that their case has been “withdrawn”.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’.

06 September 2011

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.

02 September 2011

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 have-nots 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!’

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’.