Apartheid’s ashes
the forced removals, or their descendants, settled for a cash payout instead of land.
“Many of the claimants, mostly aged, became impatient with the whole process. Even after a unanimous agreement at a general meeting on August 29 1998 that all claimants were going to opt for land back, only about 12.5% followed that decision through and opted for land. A large chunk of the claimants, 82.5%, opted for monetary compensation,” writes Mojapelo of the 1 430 claims lodged to reclaim Lady Selborne.
“Again, some of the claimants could not be blamed; they could neither afford to build new houses nor re-establish themselves in a new and modern Lady Selborne.”
Settling for a cash payout of R40 000 meant many of the dispossessed remained no better off. Some had lost businesses and properties that they had rented out, and the years of eking out a living in far-off townships took a toll on their will to return. This appears to be a trend nationally, where, in desperation, people settle for scraps rather than facing the trouble of starting afresh and resettling on their land.
Kuteng believes the government could have handled the issue of land restitution differently. It could have helped claimants to register consortiums to help them to enter the land and property market.
“The land is still there,” he says of the vast area of land that remains unoccupied in Lady Selborne.
Retired Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke pays tribute to the township’s residents in his memoir, My Own Liberator.
Moseneke, whose father Samuel John Sedise Moseneke was a respected teacher in Lady Selborne, was born there in 1947. But the deputy chief justice lived there for only three years, until the family moved to Atteridgeville.
“We will do well to spare a thought for the unsung residents of Lady Selborne and elsewhere who also put up a good fight against the injustice of forced removals and apartheid,” he writes.
“There were many heroes of the battle of Lady Selborne. The desolate residents who would not move their bodies or belongings until police forcibly carried them away in government trucks come to mind,” Moseneke wrote. — Mukurukuru Media