By Ben Maclennan
An elder of the Richtersveld community, which is claiming billions of rands from state-owned diamond company Alexcor and the government, told on Tuesday how he spent his youth working as a labourer on diamond diggings.
Oom Gert Domroch, 75, speaking his mother tongue Nama, told the Land Claims Court in Cape Town through an interpreter that he was born in Koeboes in the Richtersveld and got his first job at the age of 18.
He worked on the state diggings at Brand Karos for 40 years, doing manual labour with a pick and spade.
"The conditions under which I worked were bad. Right from the morning you were threatened, a man stood behind you.
"We worked from seven o'clock in the morning to six in the evening. Then it improved from seven to five."
He said the people who threatened him were white people.
"They were not the owners, but they were our supervisors. From the time I started working until I left, I never saw the white people working with pick and spade."
He said the place they were given to sleep was "very bad" and that they were given only coarse blankets.
Domroch said he was the only surviving member of a land committee set up by the community in 1993 to push its restitution claim.
"My goal and responsibility to the community in Koeboes was to give advice and keep on going to the very end."
Domroch is the second witness to be called by the community's legal team in the case.
On Monday Shanduka executive chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa testified that his group had formed a strategic partnership with the community which would allow it to exploit the diamond resource if their restitution claim was successful.
The community is claiming 85 000 hectares of land and up to R2,5-billion in compensation including R1,5-billion for the diamonds that Alexcor has mined there since the 1920s.
The Constitutional Court has already ruled that the community is entitled to restitution; the court now only has to decide the nature of that restitution.
The hearing, being held in the Cape High Court, is expected to last several weeks. - Sapa