Ministers turn a blind eye as greedy vultures circle Makotopong land
Gwede and Greecy misled or in cahoots with Macoal
Gwede Mantashe, the mineral resources and energy minister, and his colleague in th environmental affairs Barbara Creecy, in a Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum fashion have, like the French Bourbons, learnt nothing from history.
Recall that when the Xolobeni community in Pondoland, Eastern Cape, raised a stink against the proposed mining activities by an Australian company that the Mantashe-greecy duo had given mining rights to, this duo turned stone deaf.
Xolobeni, especially through the Amadiba Crisis Committee, rose in great protest. The duo finally lost when judge Annali Basson ruled that the Xolobeni community “may not be deprived of their land without their consent”.
The high court ordered the government to get prior community consent before granting mining rights in Pondoland. One would have thought that the duo, not only having been punched on the nose by the Xolobeni community but also having been told by a high court not to engage in such an illegal activity, would have learned a lesson.
Oh no. They have just repeated their Xolobeni escapades in Makotopong, Limpopo. To
briefly recap, it will be remembered that the apartheid regime in the mid-1960s forcibly removed the community from their ancestral lands to give space for the SADF to undertake military training exercises to combat the exertions of the liberation movement.
The Makotopong community was relocated to Nooitgedacht without any financial compensation. Not even the 16 plot owners with title deeds received a cent. But the good thing about the apartheid regime: they respected the ancestral graves of our forebears.
Arrives now the robber barons in the guise of coal mining prospectors from Vendaland with the mineral resources and energy and environment ministers in tow. Despite the Makotopong community, especially the
land owners with title deeds, objecting strenuously to the two ministries, the Human Rights Commission, the office of the public protector and land commission, the Mantashe-greecy duo granted the Macoal the right to undertake their fortune-seeking depredations on our ancestral lands.
Mantashe and Creecy were either lied to or are in cahoots with the mining fortune seekers. How could they have based their granting of Environmental Authorisation on such false
premises as the following: “No objection was received from the consulted interested and affected parties ...”
This is a blatant lie because the two of us are just a few of those who launched strong protests at this governmental brigandage.
They were either conned by Macoal and their connivers in the bureaucracy, or are in cahoots with the mining fortune seekers who are obviously seeking to look after the livelihoods of their families and employees.
The Mantashe-greecy duo prioritises the financial interests of Macoal miners over and above those of the land owners who have more than 2500 cattle owned by nine families, 500 rare goats and 800 pigs. Other villagers also do agro-farming in vegetable production.
How then can the government lie and say these people acceded to the alienation of their land to the benefit of interloping mining fortune seekers?
How can they say that sufficient public-private partnership was undertaken? Where is it? Where is the so-called Roy Muroyi Heritage Impact Assessment?
The Roodewal Farm 1200LS (and this the correct legal title) claimants wrote to Mantashe’s department to challenge the usurpation but there was no response.
It is no wonder then that we have enlisted the legal services of Richard Spoor, at great cost, to overturn this apartheid-inspired Mantashe-greecy usurpation.
Makotopong community was relocated without compensation
Sono and Rakoma are social activists