Cape Town -
A R350 million agreement has been signed for the settlement of the biggest rural land claim in the Western Cape, clearing the way for a West Coast farming community to get back land they were forced off more than 80 years ago.
The community of Ebenhaeser, about 40km from Vredendal and four hours’ drive from Cape Town, lost their most fertile land on the banks of the Olifants River in 1926.
William Fortuin, of the Ebenhaeser Communal Property Association, said their claim had not just been about getting back their land, but also “restoring the dignity of the dispossessed”.
“It has been a long road. It was emotional for many of the elders. Some people who started this process have since passed on. We are still considering how we can commemorate them and their contribution.”
Ebenhaeser Land Claims Committee chairman Peter Love said there was very little economic growth in a community, where about half of residents depended on financial assistance from the government.
“Very few people have permanent employment and there is a cycle of girls getting pregnant at a young age,” said Love.
“Residents from the Ebenhaeser community live on small 1.6-hectare lands. The R350m agreement should have happened a long time ago. It is just the beginning of our fight to legally get back what historically belonged to the community.”
A deal was struck on Friday, 18 years after they lodged their claim. The amount includes money to buy about 50 privately owned vineyard farms - a process expected to take six years - where part of their dispossessed land now rests.
A framework agreement was signed between the Land Claims Commission, Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Gugile Nkwinti and the Ebenhaeser Communal Property Association, acting on behalf of the Ebenhaeser community.
Regional land claims commissioner Michael Worsnip believed the agreement was “major” not only for the province, but for the country.
According to him, the area that was to be restored to the community included 1 566ha of privately owned commercial land along the Olifants River as well as 1 919 hectares of state-owned land.
A number of the farm owners had already agreed to sell their properties. However, he expected it would take six years to acquire all the privately owned farms and that more owners who were “on the fence” about selling would become willing to sell following the agreement.
The Ebenhaeser community was to use the land to farm a range of crops, mostly grapes.
An attorney for the claimant community, Henk Smith, of the Legal Resources Centre, said the Ebenhaeser community lived “next door” on an adjacent piece of land.
The Ebenhaeser Communal Property Association said in a press statement that the claim agreement “constitutes the formal acknowledgement by the State of the merits and quantum of the claim”.
“The people lost their richest and most fertile land,” the association’s statement read. “The retained portion of Doornkraal, to which they were moved, was vastly inferior to the land given up and it was situated at the very end of the canal.”
- Cape Times