Request for Funding: Trip to the Cop 17 Durban Conference, Nov-Dec 2011

BLBA would like to participate in the coming Cop 17 Durban Conference in Nov-Dec 2011. We appeal to all to help the Association make the trip to Durban to advocate for sustainable development and corporate accountability. Mining in Rustenburg is not only a hazard to human health, it is a permanent danger to our ecosytem. We would be happy to foward the 'Application letter for funding' should there be interested takers. Only persons/companies with a reputable Corporate Social Accountability scorecard may submit their show of interest. 

Chaneng's Styldrift Project/ Royal Bafokeng Platinum lie exposed

The last paragraph at 6.1 (page 32) of the Styldrift Project's Environmental Management Programme Report states that the Royal Bafokeng Platinum-owned Styldrift Project in Chaneng village will not alter the community's cultural identity.
We have seen, contrary to the Report, violent protest by the community, alleging that contractors employed by the mine are bussing in migrant labour during the night into the village. The new migrant labour is paid 'sleepout' housing allowance by the mines which they (mine employees) use to rent backyard dwellings in the nearby village, the Chaneng village. As recorded in Bleskop, Thekwana and Luka villages, it is expected that the migrant mine employees will within five years outgrow the host village population.

'The mine itself is not providing any additional utilities to the area. The mine is shying away from improving and developing the local health infrastracture, schools and security systems. The village will soon experience water,sanitation and waste management problems with the increased population. Soon Chaneng will be no different from Diepsloot and Alexandra',  warned Chris Senne, the Chaneng community activist.

BLBA Annual Reports for the year 2010/11

The Bafokeng Land Buyers' Association held their Annual General Meeting at Mokgatlhe Lodge on the 28th August 2011. Here are the Chairperson's and the Secretary's 2010/11 Reports.

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to be tried at the Tlhabane Magistrate Court, were shocked by the prosecutor’s announcement that their case has been “withdrawn”.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

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.

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 19^th 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’.

Tshasa August 2011 is out

Your Tshasa August 2011 is out. It is a compilation of articles that appears on http://www.bafokeng-communities.blogspot.com/.

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. His 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.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE BAFOKENG LAND BUYERS’ ASSOCIATION

The Bafokeng Land Buyers’ Association will hold their Annual General Meeting on the 28^th 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.

Bafokeng singing pina-a-tshwene at the Kgotha Kgothe meeting

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 (+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 18^th 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.

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.

Mariga a tlile abe a laela..goodbye winter, hello spring!

Climate change has caught up with us! We shall experience severe drought or rainstorms this coming spring/summer.

When it is this cold, people usually hibernate from the streets to the comfort of their homes. Media houses and journalists have Julius to thank for making their lives easy, keeping costs down and profits soaring. Have a look at this past weekend’s papers..all journalists wrote about Julius from the warmth of their homes!

The voice of the voiceless has also been in hibernation due to this climate change, caused by amongst others, the Bafokeng Tribal Authority and their mining bosses (Anglo Platinum, Impala and Xstrata).

We should therefore not be apologizing for being away.. it is not us who caused this climate change! We should however thank you for your warm understanding.

Besides our ongoing court case in Mafikeng, we should have at least reported on the Dumela Phokeng visits by Kgosi Molotlegi during April 2011 and the follow up Kgotha Kgothe of June 2011. We are also planning for our Annual General Meeting for the 28th August 2011, 10am at Mokgatle Lodge. Keep logged as we publish those reports during the course of the week.

Mogono, Chaneng, Tsitsing, Photsaneng/Bleskop Opposing Affidavit

Find the Opposing affidavit of Mogono, Chaneng, Tsitsing, Photsaneng/Bleskop Communities' in the list below the home page. Your attention is drawn from page 52. or directly here https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B72gJZ75Jz7tZmI1ODE4ZWQtNzgxZC00NWM2LWE5MjMtYjlmODM3ZTViYmY5&hl=en_US

Bafokeng Communities' files their Opposing Papers

Find in the page 'Bafokeng Communities' Opposing/Answering Papers' below the 'Home' tab various parties' filed opposing papers to the Bafokeng's Application in case no. 999/08, Mafikeng High Court.