Border Rural Committee

There are three main thrusts of the campaign. These are community mobilisation, building a critical mass of organisational support in the Eastern Cape and negotiating with government. These components are backed-up by a focussed media programme. Below we outline each of these four aspects of the campaign.

Community mobilisation
When then Minister for Land Affairs, Thoko Didiza, addressed the congress of the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) in Port Elizabeth in September 2004, she lamented the lack of community mobilisation and activism in relation to land reform in general.

We hold that the key to winning the campaign is the extent to which affected communities in the province are mobilised. There are approximately 1250 communities in the province (situated in Ciskei and Transkei) which were dispossessed through betterment. We aim to systematically and incrementally involve as many of these communities as possible in the campaign.

We undertake the mobilisation challenge on a district-by-district basis. (Betterment was implemented at the scale of, or on the basis of, the boundaries of former magisterial districts.) The steps that we follow in each district can be summarised as follows:

The first step is to formulate a programme for community involvement. This is undertaken with the assistance of local leadership. Typically, the programme entails dates for meetings with all communities believed to have been dispossessed through the implementation of betterment.
Thereafter, we implement the programme. In initial community meetings, we explain key issues such as restitution and betterment, we outline the campaign, ascertain that the community would like to participate, and thereafter facilitate the election of a committee to take the campaign forward in each village.
The first task undertaken by village committees is to administer the signing of testimonial forms by affected households. These forms confirm that the signatories were dispossessed of property rights through betterment but denied an opportunity to lodge restitution claims during the earlier period. They confirm that the Vulamasango Singene campaign is an appropriate mechanism to ensure that justice is done in this regard
After the signing of testimonials, the committees are well placed to identify old people who lived through the removal and have interesting personal stories to tell. The committees assist these elders to prepare their testimonies, such that they can narrate them clearly and coherently. Once the preparation in this regard is complete, the committees convene ‘speak-out’ sessions, where the youth and general communities have an opportunity to listen, engage and learn about the histories of their villages.
When all affected villages in a district are organised, we facilitate the establishment of a district committee. This committee takes responsibility for mass action that is planned and implemented at district level. Examples of such action include a rally in Middledrift in November 2004, a march in King Williams Town in September 2005 and a concert in Cofimvaba in December 2005.
All district committees are represented on the provincial committee. This structure is responsible for determining overall campaign strategy, especially as it pertains to negotiating with government, advocacy and mobilisation.
Even as the campaign expands, we attempt to sustain the interest of organised communities through a range of activities including public art and exchange visits.

The campaign is already firmly entrenched in certain districts of the province. For example 55 year old Mnoneleli Ngqoshana from Zihlaleni in Middledrift district reports that:
We embrace Vulamasango with all our hearts because we think that it will take us back to roots.

We have been negotiating with government on the issue since mid-2003. The first phase of this process culminated in a meeting with the then Minister of Land Affairs, Thoko Didiza, in November 2003. In the meeting, the Minister agreed that there was a genuine and substantial problem that had to be addressed. The opinion of the Minister was that there was prejudice in policy (not in law), and therefore sought to find a policy solution to the problem. (She ruled out an amendment to the Restitution of Land Rights Act as inappropriate and unwarranted.)

In order to find such a policy solution, she set up a task team, comprising senior officials from her department and civil society representatives. The task team recommended that Cabinet allow for a six-month window during which victims of betterment claims would be entitled to lodge claims that would be resolved within the framework of the restitution process. The Minister approved this recommendation in April 2004. Since then the Task Team has been attempting to put some of the required institutional building blocks in place (eg criteria for eligibility, claim form). The name given to the proposed policy solution is ‘the betterment redress programme’. Once the task team has completed its work, it is envisaged that the Minister will give final approval, enabling the implementation of the betterment redress programme.

In order to ensure that the programme does get final approval, it is necessary to ensure that all key organisations in the province are united in their support for the campaign.

The most powerful and significant organisations in the province are the three organisations that make up the Tripartite Alliance, namely the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The campaign has been endorsed by the provincial leadership of all these organisations. The support of these organisations at provincial level also translates into their involvement in campaign activities at district level. Practically speaking, this means that ward councillors and Alliance structures are involved in organising events such as community meetings, rallies and the like.

In addition, two of the most significant civil society networks in the province are the Eastern Cape Provincial Council of Churches (ECPCC) and the Eastern Cape NGO Coalition (ECNGOC). Through its membership of 24 churches, the council represents the majority of Christians in the province. Similarly, coalition represents NGOs in the Eastern Cape. Both the ECPCC and ECNGOC endorse the campaign. The Border Rural Committee (BRC) is one of the members of the coalition. Given its capacity in relation to land reform, it has played a lead secretariat and strategic role in driving and sustaining the campaign since it commenced in 2002.

So we are well on our way to building a critical mass of organisational support in the province. But this challenge is ongoing. We call on all stakeholders in the province including the business community to back the call to ’open the door so that we can come in’.