Tears of apartheid bulldozers

The recent escalating violence against foreign nationals in SA shows beyond doubt that Africa, as a continent, has to start urgently learning about its own black history. The untold and undocumented black history, which was narrated by the Chief Tongogara’s descendants during the official handing over of the sacred Mount Tshikumbu in the Kruger National Park has made me want to know more about where I come from.

Speaking to some of the descendants from the Bakgalaka clan it was mind-blowing that I could understand most, if not all, they said because their language was very similar to mine.

The clan, who are believed to have moved from the south of Zimbabwe’s Masvingo area to the area between the Olifants and Letaba Rivers in 1658, were forcefully removed from Mount Tshikumbu when borders were first established during colonialism.

In his note Historic Mount Tshikumbu connects Semitic Bakgalaka clan to the past, published by Mukurukuru Media, author and journalist Lucas Ledwaba said the Bakalanga migrated and settled in different parts of present day Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa after the demise of the Great Zimbabwe kingdom around 1450, adopting different names along the way.

“The Kruger National Park, though today a national treasure revered worldwide as a shining beacon of nature conservation, was built on the tears of native communities that were brutally removed forcefully from the land which has evidence of occupation dating back to the Iron Age,” he wrote.

“The park was proclaimed on 31 May, 1926, by the Union of South Africa, following an initial proclamation by the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek on 26 March 1898.”

Ledwaba explained that both governments, whose decisions impacted hugely on the native people, were by white people, for white people.

“The Zimbabwe-based Kalanga Language and Cultural Development Association, says on its website ‘the people now called Kalanga or Bakalanga have been in Western Zimbabwe and Eastern Botswana for over a thousand years’.”

This took me back to how I learnt about the history of Pretoria and the subsequent forced removal of my ancestors.

I vividly remember on a mild day sitting on a stoep near the gate in Ga-Rankuwa Zone 16 where I grew up, waiting for my late grandmother, Dimakatso Mononyane, to come back from a land claims meeting with the local councillors.

With a clenched jaw, she gave me, my sister and late cousin a hostile glare and marched right into the house without even saying hello.

We quickly got up, ran to her bedroom and sat on her bed, eagerly waiting for her to tell us what happened at the meeting – and after a few deep breaths she began narrating the story of how they were forcefully removed from her place of birth to a place we knew as our home.

According to my grandmother, Ga-Rankuwa quickly became one of the township in the ’60s where the early residents were forcefully removed – from Lady Selborne, Bantule, Marabastad, Eastwood and Sophiatown, to name a few.

She said the area around Ga-Rankuwa had been settled by Tswana people since at least the 17th century after the many urban settlements, like Lady Selborne, fell to apartheid bulldozers.

To this day, I never again saw my grandmother cry except that day when she finally told us a little about where she or rather we all came from.

Her eyes filled with tears as she slowly said: “The whole Lady Selborne was taken from each and every one of us, when they destroyed our family homes.”

And although that is the very little I’ve known about the my black history, this has prompted me, as a South African, to think twice before referring to another black person from a different country as a foreigner – and to also extend the little knowledge I have on my history to others.

I have learnt the harsh lesson of forced removals through my grandmother’s tears – and think twice before condemning ‘foreigners’.