Court expected to rule on the biggest land claim in KZN

THE ruling on the biggest land claim to be lodged in Kwazulu-natal is expected to be delivered by the land claims court at a community hall on the North Coast in August.

The claim, by the descendents of 1 280 families displaced to make way for white-owned commercial agriculture in the 1900s, is for 130 properties between the Umhlali and uthongathi rivers. This includes Westbrook, parts of Tongaat and the Dolphin Coast, including Umhlali.

The families are being represented by the Makhosi Khosi Communal Property Trust.

They make up 1 900 of the still outstanding claims lodged with the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights before the December 1998 cutoff in Kwazulu-natal.

The trust’s spokesman Cedrick Gumede said not all families were forcibly removed simultaneously as some had remained to work on the white-owned farms.

“We lodged the claim in 1994. When our claim was gazetted in 2006 they had left out the developed coastal areas such as Ballito and we didn’t get straight answers from the commission.

“This is why we approached the court in 2015 for our claim to be handled there,” Gumede said.

It is this verdict which the claimants now await.

Since the claim was lodged, the Dolphin Coast has been substantially developed, including Zimbali and other high-end residential estates, as well as shopping malls.

Gumede claimed that before 2006 there were farmers willing to sell but they had backtracked due to delays by the commission.

An emotional Janet Manzi, 57, said her family was paid R600 when they were removed.

Manzi said her family’s graves had been desecrated by development, another indication of the disrespect her family still endured since being made landless.

One of the property owners in Salt Rock, Mike Jahnig, said he bought his land in 2010 and was unaware of the claim.

Ballito’s Katie Jones said she first heard about it in 2012 but no one from the commission had told them if they would be affected.

Chief director of restitution in KZN advocate Bheki Mbili said that the delays had been the result of many challenges including investigating the validity of each claim and the identities of the claimants.