Nama prayer at land hearing

2003-02-17 17:04

Bloemfontein - A Nama prayer preceded the Supreme Court of Appeal hearing on Monday in which the deeply-religious Richtersveld community of South Africa's northernmost West Coast were claiming back part of their diamond-rich ancestral land.

Richtersveld community leader Willem de Klerk asked God's blessing on the proceedings and for "justice to prevail in this appeal case".

Everyone in the courtroom, including legal representatives of both sides, stood up for his prayer in the traditional language of the Nama tribe, which forms part of the Koina group of peoples.

De Klerk was one of more than 20 Richtersvelders who attended the first day of the scheduled two-day hearing during which the community is appealing against a ruling by the Land Claims Court in March 2001.

The Land Claims Court dismissed their restitution claim to a part of their ancestral land, comprising a narrow strip of seven farms of 80 000 hectares along the West Coast. The land stretches from the Orange River in the north to just below Port Nolloth in the south and is now registered in the name of mining company Alexkor.

According to the respondents - the government, which fully owns Alexkor, and Alexkor - the Richtersveld case involves an important policy issue regarding the ownership of all colonised land in South Africa.

A ruling in favour of the Richtersvelders will turn back the clock by putting the ownership of all colonised land in dispute, they maintain.

Wim Trengove, SC, for the Richtersveld community, disputed this on Monday, arguing that the case was unique among the land claims of indigenous peoples because no white settlement of the area took place after it was annexed by England in 1847 to its existing Cape Colony.

Diamonds

The Richtersveld community was left in undisturbed possession of their land until alluvial diamonds were discovered along the West Coast in the 1920s. This was well after the cut-off date of 1913 provided for in the current Restitution Act, Trengove argued.

He also disputed the respondents' argument that the Richtersveld's boundaries were never properly defined and that the area could thus not have been the subject of legal ownership.

Trengove quoted from the reports of surveyors of the 19th century, maintaining that the Richtersvelders were able to point out the boundaries of their land as early as 1854 to then surveyor-general Bell.

Quoting from centuries-old official documents, Trengove argued that colonisation of the Cape, to which the Richtersveld was annexed as Crown land, took place with the express preservation of all private property rights.

Before annexation of the Richtersveld, the government consulted the local chiefs, asking them whether they wanted to become British subjects. The chiefs gave consent on the condition that their land be protected from "others who were approaching, but who were not part of them", Trengove said.

Indigenous right

He conceded that the colonial government had the right to extinguish the land rights of the Richtersveld community, but said that government never exercised such a right. It categorised the Richtersvelders as people who had a legal claim to their land.

Also, all the evidence confirmed that the Richtersvelders had an indigenous right to their land in terms of the customary law at the time. This was recognised by others, such as trekking farmers from outside who moved onto the Richtersveld land at the time, Trengove argued.

Floors Strauss, chair of the Richtersveld Communal Property Association (CPA), said at the hearing that they were also reclaiming a long-term lease of around 40 000 hectares of their land along the Orange River, held by privately owned Transhex diamond mine.

According to Strauss the lease to this land, which forms part of the Richtersveld Reserve in which the community now lives, was negotiated by the apartheid government without proper consultation of the Richtersveld community.

They now felt that the terms of the lease did not sufficiently benefit the Richtersveld community.

Their claim to the lease was currently being evaluated, Strauss said.

- SAPA