Today I am based in Johannesburg because of my work. I live here with my daughter and grandson, but I spend much of my time with my son at our family home in Goedgevonden where he lives with our extended family. My son is engaged in farming, bee-keeping, vegetable gardening and training his fellow young farmers in small scale alternative farming methods. 

My family’s roots run deep in the land around Ventersdorp, including Goedgevonden from which we were removed to Vrischgewaagd, and in Putfontein near Coligny, from which family members were removed to Ramatlabama near Mafikeng. I also had family living in Volgestruisknoop near Putfontein who were removed to Gannalaagte. I was born in Goedgevonden and grew up in Vrischgewaagd and later Ramatlabama 600. 

That entire area was densely settled by African families who had countered dispossession by buying and establishing rights on land they had acquired in defiance of the laws of the Boer Republic and apartheid. They managed to establish dignified and thriving family homes against all odds, and invested heavily in the education of their children at local schools and at nearby mission schools such as the famous Bethel Opleiding Skool (now called Bethel High School), Boitshoko High School built by Uitkyk Missionaries, and Kutlwano Secondary School in Mogopa. 

I am fortunate to come from a tradition of strong and resilient families who can trace our histories and land rights back on both the maternal and paternal sides.   

If the apartheid government had been consistent in its policy, it would have made our densely settled, thriving, and developed belt of African owned and occupied land into a homeland area. Instead, they embarked on a process of destruction and forced removals to accommodate white interests because of the mineral and agricultural wealth of the Western Transvaal maize belt. This process of destruction and forced removals was in fully swing from the 1970s onwards. 

The process of challenging forced removals has defined my life. As a young schoolgirl, I took minutes for the land claiming committee, which was forcefully re-occupying Goedgevonden, Welgevonden and Nagel led by the late Mr O L Segopolo. I was heavily involved in the process of re-occupying and rebuilding Goedgevonden in many ways, including volunteering as a teacher and making sure that both the two schools we re-built were registered. 

I was inspired by brave community leaders from other areas who spear-headed the drive for reoccupation and restitution of land rights, stalwarts like Mam’ Beauty Mkhize in Driefontein, Mam’ Prisca Shabalala in Matiwaneskop, the late Reverend Ramosime, and Arthur Monnakgotla of Bakubung, Mam’ Tshepo Khumbane in Bronkhorspruit, Othniel Phasha of Doornkop in Botshabelo, Mpumalanga, Mr Philip More of Bakwena ba Mogopa, the late Christian Mabalane of Baphiring and others. I remember and personally experienced the ambivalent role adopted by many traditional leaders or chiefs of the Western Transvaal in those days. Many of them cooperated with the policy of forced removals and became part of the Bophuthatswana government. 

I was a leader of the lobby to extend the cut-off date for lodging restitution claims from April 1998 to December 1998. I joined the Transvaal Rural Action Committee (TRAC) as a volunteer and assisted people to lodge restitution claims to their land through the restitution programme introduced by our new government after 1994. I drove to remote rural areas in seven provinces, going door to door to ensure that people do not miss the deadline. 

My community was also one of the beneficiaries of the Land Reform Pilot programme from around 1996 to 1998, and was awarded a Presidential Discretionary Fund grant in 1995. The resilience and persistence of land claiming communities during the 1980s ensured that the land question was on the agenda of the negotiations for a post-apartheid South Africa and gave rural people hope in the new democracy. 

Sadly, we later had to take the same democratic government to court to protect and assert the hard fought right to restitution in the face of government corruption and policies that privilege the rights of elites over those of ordinary people. Policy changes such as replacement of the Reconstruction and Development Programme began to strip black communities of their dignity and destroy our hopes for the new South Africa. I see the current TKLA litigation as a continuation of my life-long struggle for the preservation of the African ideals and reality of land rights, dignity, and accountability. 

I have respect and appreciation for legitimate traditional leaders participating in the promotion of community development in our rural areas. But traditional leaders cannot refuse to be held accountable and be allowed and encouraged by government to abuse their positions. I personally followed the proceedings of the Baloyi Commission of Inquiry into the financial affairs of the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela, and witnessed the recalcitrant behaviour of Mr Nyalala Pilane, the former Kgosi, in the witness box. I also observed the dignified role of one of his peers, Kgosi Mahumane, who was a member of the Commission and asked thoughtful questions and made considered observations. 

My grandparents and great grandparents fought these battles and managed to bequeath land dignity and family cohesion to me and my siblings despite the enormous odds against them. To abandon these struggles for land and democracy is to abandon my own self. These ideals, traditions and rights have sustained my family and my community and are part of our legitimate customary law. They have made me who I am. Should we fail to preserve them and pass them on to the next generation we doom our society to despair, corruption and disintegration