A 100-year lease on a piece of land 6km upriver from the Kowie river mouth would allow the Korana community in Ndlambe to practice traditional rituals and develop a cultural village that would attract international tourists to the area. That’s what Xgoaaob (Chief) Johannes Opperman, would like to achieve for the Korana-identifying group in Ndlambe. Illustrating his point, on the day Talk of the Town visited the community, a group of Chinese exchange students spent several hours at the site, learning about Korana rituals and customs and enjoying a traditional home-cooked meal there.
Meanwhile Centenary Park where Opperman’s group set up camp on December 15 2023 has become a hot potato for Ndlambe Municipality, which owns and manages the beautiful riverside spot. In last week’s full council meeting, the issue was batted back and forth between the municipal manager and the council’s speaker. Eventually it was resolved that as the office with the mandate of public participation, the speaker should further engage with the community, write a report and bring it to council.
The Oppermans and some other families pitched tents at the public nature reserve, on December 15, 2023. The reserve had been closed to the public for months before that crime, including violent crime, had become out of control at the isolated spot.
“Since we moved here, there has been not one incident,” Opperman told Talk of the Town.
Carefully placed among the decades-old milkwood trees right next to the river stand several dome tents. Three or four wooden structures, varying in size and in different stages of completion, are scattered among other trees in the coastal forest. A traditional grass hut built for a young girl’s /habab (menstruation) nqau (traditional ritual) stands not far from one of the timber houses.
The group cites space to conduct nqaus as an important motivation for their claim.
Present at Centenary Park that day was Paramount Chief of the Links Royal House in the Eastern Cape, Crawford Fraser.
“There are six nqaus,” Fraser said. “Birth, menstruation, manhood, marriage, leadership and death. All of them require space to perform.”
“Our home at Station Hill is 44 square metres,” Opperman said. “How are we supposed to perform those rituals, with everything they involve – including bringing cattle and building traditional huts – in a space that size?
“We are here because we want to be who we are supposed to be.”
While no land claims had been concluded, several members of the Korana-identifying community said their families had been forcibly evicted from the area during apartheid and wanted to return to their roots.
Opperman’s wife Joanne said her family had lived downriver, just past Hilpert cricket field, together with the Marais, Hilpert, Doeks, Lotter and Gysman families. Only the Marais and Hilpert families had lodged land claims.
Aside from the rights Joanne and others assert, she feels she belongs there.
“This is where I belong. It’s quiet.
“All these years I thought I was ‘coloured’,” Joanne said. “I’ve found my real self, now that I know who I am and where I come from.
Earlier, community elders had shared rich and vivid memories of events and places from their childhoods and youth along that stretch of the river.
“We would like to be able to show visitors some of our rituals and traditions.” Joanne said.
Almost on cue, a group of Chinese exchange students arrived. They were with their lecturer, Arielle Liu, who holds a professorship of African Studies at Zhejiang University in China, and teaches Economics at Nelson Mandela University. They were among a group of 24 students from various disciplines who interacted enthusiastically (with Liu translating) with the Korana elders about traditions and language.
Incongruous, close to the grass hut, is an ablution block with a large water storage tank on its roof, and with freshly painted white walls.
“We rebuilt this and fixed it up,” Opperman said.
“When we got here, this place was a mess.”
To illustrate his point, he showed TOTT a second ablution block that has been reduced to near rubble: only one wall remains standing.
“The other one was just like this. We will fix this one too,” Opperman said. Pointing to a broken sewerage pipe, he said he’d tested it and the pipe itself wasn’t blocked.
“That means that just like the other one we’ve fixed, we can get these toilets working again too. This sewerage pipe connects to Ndlambe’s sewerage works.”
That answered some environmental concerns. What about refuse?
“We manage that in the old-fashioned way,” said Opperman’s wife Joanne. “We burn it.”
There was uncertainty about the handling of metal and plastic, though.
The Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Act was passed in 2021, following years of campaigning for the cultural rights that translate into land and representational rights. The campaign began with a 300km walk from Gqeberha via Makhanda to Bhisho, where activists including Fraser and former MPL Christian Martin handed over a memorandum demanding that the notion of “coloured” be scrapped and that the government recognise that the Khoi and San were the first people of South Africa.
Fast-forward to the Ndlambe council chamber in Port Alfred last Friday, where the DA revealed in a full council meeting that they had paid an oversight visit to the settlement earlier that week.
An agenda item titled ‘Report date 21 August from the municipal manager to council: illegal occupying of public open space at Centenary Park’ noted that in March, an item had been put before council noting that illegal occupiers had invaded the public open space. Council had decided to divert the item to the office of the speaker for further investigation before taking a resolution on the matter.
Municipal manager Rolly Dumezweni said the area had been previously declared an environmentally sensitive area.
“Until that declaration is nullified, people must not build there,” he said.
“The speaker has engaged with the illegal occupiers several times,” the report from the municipal manager noted. “Therefore this item has been brought back to council…”
The report recommended that council decide to serve an eviction order on the illegal occupants.
DA caucus leader Sikhumbuzo ‘Skura’ Venene revealed that the party had visited the site earlier in the week. He said, “We cannot continuously defer matters if it means we are scared to make a decision… people are continuously building – that’s what we saw – we have photographs.”
The EFF’s Xolisa Runeli and Mzwandile Mgwebi expressed concern that the matter should be handled sensitively and that any decision taken should be based on facts, “not whim”.
- This article was first published in Talk of the Town, September 5, 2024. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
