Category: Reports

‘Xolobeni has come to KwaZulu-Natal’.  These were the words of a community leader in mining affected Mtubatuba areas when he called to advise that grandmother Fikile Ntshangase had been gunned down in her home at Ophondweni.  Mrs Ntshangase was Vice Chairperson of one of seven sub-committees of the Mfolosi Community Environmental Justice Organisation (MCEJO) for Ophondweni and neighbouring areas, and a powerful voice in opposing the expansion of mining by the Tendele Coal mine, which will displace rural farmers from their homes.  The MCEJO, which represents thousands of subsistence farmers in the broader area affected by the mine, are Applicants in two court cases challenging the expansion of the mine. This assassination followed on a stepped up campaign by the mining company and the KwaZulu-Natal government since February 2020 to persuade applicants to withdraw the court challenge and for those most affected by the expansion – including in the Ophondweni area – to accept the compensation the mine is offering.

During these past few months several MCEJO members have been offered R300 000 by the mine to withdraw the cases. Some have been seduced by this offer and their membership of MCEJO  as been suspended.  All those refusing to sign their properties over to Tendele Mining have received death threats, some linked to local traditional leadership, one survived a drive-by shooting in her home, and one applicant was attacked in his home.  The threat was ever-present, with suspicious vehicles seen in the area at night, and although the local police station deployed patrols the nature of the deep rural area rendered comprehensive protection of residents difficult.  Locals have also devised their own community watch strategies.

With the Supreme Court of Appeal case due to have a virtual hearing on 3 November, the pro-mining campaign has been stepped up during the past week. On 15 October, former MCEJO members who are now colluding with the mine were among those who disrupted a meeting the organisation’s representatives were having with their legal team and one prominent leader was assaulted.  A case is being opened.  This leader, who works in another area, has been warned that his life will be in danger if he visits his family home.

On Monday 19 October, Mrs Ntshangase, who was widowed early this year, and was staying in Ophondweni with her toddler grandson, reported that her dogs were barking in her yard, suggesting that there were intruders in the vicinity.  She is described as being a very strong, powerful voice against capitulating to the demands of the mining company. One of her close associates in this struggle describes her as a leader in the Somkhele/Mpukunyoni committee, working tirelessly for the community, who ‘ exemplified honesty, integrity and the courage to speak her mind……she did not care about being liked, but cared about what she believed was right ‘.  These qualities probably cost her her life.

The strategies used by the mining company in this area are typical of those found in all areas in which these companies operate, which involve dangling incentives to impoverished residents with the inevitable consequences of stirring deep community divisions, invariably leading  to violence and deaths.  In rural areas which are difficult to police it takes great determination and courage to counter these strategies, and Mrs Ntshangase exemplified the type of leadership which promotes community solidarity and resistance.  There are other leaders of this calibre in the NCEJO and, if anything, the assassination of Mama Ntshangase has renewed their determination to step up the fight against exploitation by the mine.

What is truly disgraceful is that the mine is being supported by the KwaZulu government. In June/July the Department of Community Safety and Liaison sent a staff member – apparently from its Civilian Secretariat arm (which is conspicuous in its absence whenever the threat of violence looms) to persuade community members to negotiate with the mine.  Since then, after MCEJO members thought it only proper to approach the office of the Ingonyama (King Zwelithini) about their struggle they have come under even further government pressure via the office of the Premier and CoGTA (Co-operative Governance and Traditional Leadership department).  This is the self-same government that claims that it needs to expropriate land without compensation to redress the land imbalance – while wilfully pushing to displace rural farmers from their family land from which they subsist, and risk their lives in the process..  Perhaps these hypocrites should ask themselves whether, with the assassination of Mrs Ntshangase, they have blood on their hands.

With breath-taking arrogance, the Chairperson of the Ingonyama Trust Board declared – in Women’s Month – that a bill aimed at giving women access to land should not apply in land it controlled.  He was supported by the KwaZulu-Natal House of Traditional Leaders, which agreed that giving land to women undermined ‘African traditions’.  Such arrogance, like many other pronouncements about supposedly ‘African’ ways,  ignores the huge diversity of societies on the continent, and the way in which that heterogeneity has historically shaped access to land. It also obscures the way in which colonialism has shaped current land norms and practices. Ironically, the Trust itself, like the contemporary office of traditional leadership, is a product of colonialism.  In celebrating Heritage month, it is appropriate to consider the disastrous implications of these invented traditions on the status of women and their access to land.

What exactly is this ‘African way’ that the Trust and others refer to, given this tremendous historical, political, ecological and economic diversity, which have impacted in so many different ways on forms of social organisation.  While ancestral veneration, in which either maternal or paternal ancestors might dominate, plays a significant role in most societies  so too did the spread, hundreds of years ago,  of Christianity and Islam  Political organisation ranged from societies having no centralised authorities to feudal kingdoms. All of these factors impacted on the status of women, and how they accessed the land on which most of them farmed. Land was valued for subsistence and, with the rise of states, a means of territorial control. It also had religious significance, especially given its association with family- including female – ancestors.  However, it was the advent of colonialism, especially the rampant capitalism of the nineteenth century, that led to land – including rights to mine on it – as a commercial commodity.   The nature of gender relationships, too, was transformed, since the roles of men and women had been complementary rather than hierarchical. The nineteenth century hierarchy of gender relationships – termed by Marx and Engels ‘ the world historic defeat of the female sex’ – was imposed on colonial subjects  Although, in centralised states, men generally occupied positions of authority, women also exercised power in different ways , especially as they grew older. (White women in South Africa only gained voting rights in 1930). In what is now the Northern Province the Lovedu queen – whose reputation inspired Rider Haggard to write the novel ‘She’ – controlled the realm’s forests herself.

The way in which these colonial powers administered what is now KwaZulu-Natal played a crucial role in shaping South African society, including apartheid. It was in this colony that the ‘indirect rule’ policy (the ‘Shepstone system’) took root. The essence of this policy was that indigenous people were confined to designated areas (Reserves), access to ‘white’ towns was restricted, and those living in reserves were governed through their chiefs, who were responsible to magistrates and the provincial governor. Instead of being ‘chiefs by their people’ (who might previously have deposed or killed them if they were unpopular), chiefs became employees of the colonial government. If they failed to obey instructions, promptly, they were removed and even imprisoned, as Langalibabele of the Hlubi found to his cost. In areas in which people lived contentedly without chiefs, Administrator Shepstone created new ones. After Union in 1910 this indirect rule system, and the exclusionary practices that went with it, became the norm country-wide, and was further refined by apartheid.

In a unique move, the colonial government codified what it defined as customary law (the Natal Code) and dealt a mortal blow to the status of women.  Historians have noted the existence of ‘gender co-operation as opposed to gender contestation’ as Professor Sifiso Ndlovu puts it. Male regiments, for example, had female counterparts. They also participated in networks of authority structures, the pivotal role of Regent Queen Mnqabayi (King Shaka’s aunt) being a prime example.  The codified not-very-customary-law* decreed that women would remain life-long minors, always under the control of a man (father, brother, husband or son). Only under exceptional circumstances could they become ‘emancipated’.  By the time the legislation was amended in the 1980s, the normative damage had been done. Ethnic identity is a learned phenomenon and an article by the late anthropologist David Webster, published posthumously, noted that Thonga men in northernmost KZN were adopting a Zulu identity as it was a preferred category for employment on the mines.  In contrast, women rejected an identity change as they considered they enjoyed more power than their Zulu sisters.

In insulting the women of Africa, the Ingonyama Trust apparently does not realise that it, too, has its roots in colonialism, as do the positions of some of the chiefs. Most of the land held by the Trust is nineteenth century Reserve land, some of which had never been part of the historic Zulu kingdom. This land formed the basis of the KwaZulu homeland, and included land ceded to it by then President de Klerk in the early 1990s.   Like the colonial masters, the Trust and some of the chiefs collude to deprive poor farmers of their land, especially for mining-related purposes. It also insists that men are lease holders to land acquired by women.  Truly, colonialism is alive and well in KwaZulu-Natal and the supposedly democratic government lets it live on.

*This term was used by Harvard Professor Emerita Sally Falk Moore,a lawyer and an anthropologist, to describe the departure from customary law of that she saw operating in traditional courts in Tanzania decades ago.

As in some other rural areas there is apparently no enforcement of Lockdown Regulations in Ophondweni, Mtubatuba.  On the night of 17 April the home of Sabelo Dladla was broken into and he was injured and robbed by the assailants.  This incident is perceived as sending a warning message to Dladla, who is the Second Applicant, representing the 4000 strong Mfolosi community Environmental Justice Organisation (MCEJO) , in a High Court case in which Respondents include government ministers and municipalities, the Ingonyama Trust Board, and Tendele Coal Mining (Pty) Ltd.  The First Applicant in this case (82865/18 North Gauteng High court) is the Global Environmental Trust.  The outcome of this matter,  which is currently set down for Appeal in the  Bloemfontein  Supreme Court of Appeal, has crucial implications for both environmental rights, and the rights of people living on rural land targeted by mining companies.  Fortunately Dladla and his family have gone into hiding as shots were fired outside his house on 29 April.

‘The day before the incident at Dladla’s home local police stations had been alerted by email to tensions, and had been asked to patrol the area, following threats to people who had not agreed to move from their homes for the coal mine to expand its operations.  Whenever mining is planned in rural areas expectations are created that it will bring jobs, which fuel tensions in communities with high unemployment rates.  In the current case, people refusing to sign papers agreeing to move are accused of depriving people of employment, or of leading to retrenchments if the mine is unable to expand.  Those who have not signed these papers are long-standing residents, whose rights to remain on the land are protected in law, and who claim that the compensation offered is not nearly enough to make up for the loss of land which allows them to subsist through farming or keeping livestock. Another important factor is the existence of family graves on the land.   

Among those allegedly making the threats are a former municipal councillor and members of the local Traditional Authority, through which documents had been distributed by the mine for people to sign. Among those receiving threats are members of the M, D, and R families.  From affidavits deposed to, it seems that some of those making the threats have been driving freely in the area in breach of lockdown regulations. On the night of 24 April a vehicle without headlights was able to move around the homes of M and D, with its occupants firing many shots at homes whose residents include elderly people and children.  From descriptions by family members, and the impact marks on the walls, a rifle or rifles were used.

Despite the emailed request for patrols on 16 April, which had been followed up with a further email two days later giving specific directions about the part of Ophondweni under threat, there had been no patrols prior to the attack of 24 April. Nor were any patrols dispatched after a further email sent on 25 April, which had been copied to the Deputy Provincial Commissioner.  Following a telephone call to the local KwaMsane station, a patrol was eventually dispatched that night and the following night.  Since then, despite further follow ups with provincial management, only one patrol has been seen in the area.

The families who have been attacked and/or threatened with attack, are understandably terrified, and threats continue. On 6 May Mr D received an anonymous message on his phone  saying that although ‘they’ did not want to kill anyone ‘they’ wanted D and others to be relocated as ‘they’ had been retrenched from the mine and ‘they’ could return to work if people moved; if they refused to relocate the breadwinners would be shot as it was known where they worked.   Mr D has opened a case of intimidation..

Despite it being known that the traditional authorities themselves have made veiled threats against people who have refused to sign documents from the mine, and despite the presence of well-armed people moving around the area with impunity during lockdown, there are still no regular patrols in the affected area, and no arrests have been made.  Understandably, traumatised residents have no confidence in the local police.  Years of experience shows that local police are generally loth to take action against traditional leadership.  Through the provincial detective head, a request has been made for the Dladla, M and D dockets to be transferred to a task team from another SAPS Cluster. 

While police and army are deployed to stop people brewing beer or drinking in their own homes, and to maliciously arrest people for minor transgressions, the SAPS, which is constitutionally bound to prevent crime, as well as bring perpetrators to justice, is failing completely in its duty to protect vulnerable communities from being attacked and killed while practising ‘maximum enforcement’ against people on the urban streets.

However, government culpability for what is happening in Ophondweni goes beyond the conduct of the police, and extends to environmental and minerals ministries.  Residents in the Mtubatuba areas in which coal mining is taking place attribute high levels of serious respiratory illnesses, and deaths, to the pollution of coal dust, and even send their children out of the area to school elsewhere because of fears for their health. Why, given Global Warming, and the phasing out of coal as an energy source, should the government allow coal mines to expand?  A rush of mining-related legislation by the Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources provide no real protection for the land rights of rural communities. The passing by parliament of the Khoisan and Traditional Leaders Act, too, shows contempt for the rights of rural communities since it provides traditional leaders, who fit snugly into the pockets of mining companies, with even more powers than they previously had, to enter into business agreements.  If passed, the second of the Bantustan bills – the Traditional courts Bill – will effectively give them even greater social control over their hapless subjects.  Do all these legislative actions by a government that claims to be democratic suggest that it has any real  concern for the basic rights of all South Africans to health, a clean environment, food security and safety – or any commitment to preserving these rights?

The authoritarianism in Covid-19 Regulations is just the latest manifestation of this growing trend in governance, marked by a culture of secrecy and extensive powers given to ministers. It is not surprising since many parliamentarians and executive members supported the passing of the notorious Protection of State Information bill in 2013.  From their conduct and utterances, some apparatchiks would serve with distinction in totalitarian regimes. The ‘new’ regime is looking suspiciously like the old, except that the deep divisions in society are based on class and not race. The National Security Council established by the President in February 2020 mirrors apartheid’s State Security Council and legislation increasing the powers of authoritarian traditional leaders would do the old regime proud.  The militaristic language of the lockdown media statement issued by the KZN premier on 19 April sounded like a declaration of martial law. In the early 2000s when rural communities beset by violence begged for army patrols, the then government refused to deploy soldiers for civilian policing. The Covid-19 lockdown provisions, some of which have no place in a truly democratic society, may well be a sign of things to come, unless more South Africans pay attention and find ways of stopping this disturbing trend in its tracks.

Excessive ministerial powers plus lack of transparency

It has become increasingly difficult to obtain information from government departments, and even PAIA applications may need the threat of court action to produce results. Simultaneously, corruption in government has grown exponentially. Looting in the once financially stable eThekwini Metro has necessitated its borrowing R1 billion rand, while opacity in governance has increased with the passing of a controversial ‘secrecy’ by-law limiting media and public participation in some meetings in 2017, with a further unsuccessful attempt by the mayor in August 2019 to limit media reporting.  Given this context, moves by ministers to appropriate more powers for themselves should be ringing alarm bells.  Take, for example, the planned take-over of some of the functions of schools’ governing bodies by the inept Department of Basic Education via the BELA (Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill), and the autocratic threats by the same minister to discipline teachers who refuse to teach a highly controversial sex education programme, rejected by many parents.

Of all the pending sloppy legislation, the NHI (National Health Insurance) bill demonstrates just how badly power has gone to politicians’ heads. The minister of this seriously dysfunctional department controls all its operations through appointments s/he makes, including to bodies which supposedly provide ‘independent’ oversight of health services. Its vague wording in places gives the minister carte blanche, including in decisions about the powers of national versus provincial competencies, the type of information users will be obliged to provide, and who s/he will give that information to (raising serious concerns about privacy) As if all this power concentrated in one pair of hands is not bad enough, s/he also appoints an Appeals Tribunal with High Court powers, without any recourse to Appeal decisions.

The powers granted to ministers in pending legislation relating to land and mining are very alarming, and their puerile attempts to justify it in terms of black empowerment are nauseatingly hypocritical. A prime example is the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Draft bill allowing land expropriation without compensation. The land restitution process has been riddled with gross corruption, by-passing many deserving claimants in favour of well- connected opportunists, while the rights of poor rural residents have become increasingly threatened.

There has been a rush of legislation designed to facilitate mining and the empowerment of the elites without adequate time for consultation and comment. While public attention was diverted, the Minister published, on the first day of lockdown, amended Regulations to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act which ignored submissions and stripped communities of their land rights.   The Draft Upstream Petroleum Resources Development bill was sneakily gazetted on 24 December 2019, and no copy posted on the parliamentary website, despite the deadline for comments being the third week of February.  This bill too represents an extremely serious threat to the rights of people living on land targeted by mining interests.  The apartheid government removed people from their land for its own ideological-cum-economic interests, the present government allows removals for mining activities which only benefit the new elites.

Traditional leaders are among those benefitting and it is in the recent Bantustan Bills that the same apartheid-type agenda is manifest. The Khoisan and Traditional Leaders Act, already signed into law, increases the power of these leaders to conclude business arrangements detrimental to those affected. The Traditional Courts Bill is currently before the NCOP. There is little difference between this legislation and that which it replaces, a section of the Black Administration Act of 1927; if anything, it gives these leaders even more power than the previous racist regimes deemed good for black people. Historically, these courts heard civil cases in terms of some illusionary customary law. Now, their powers are extended to hear certain criminal cases, the details of which are not spelled out in the legislation.  Like his/her predecessor the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs exercises full power about the nature of crimes included, and their punishment, which s/he will publish in government gazettes – which are inaccessible to those at the receiving end of ‘justice’ meted out by leaders (some of whom engage in criminal activities themselves with impunity). Like apartheid, these political concessions to traditional leaders incorrectly use the abused term ‘culture’ as justification –  but they are racial:  Not only are they are applied only to black people, but their application is not voluntary , as our supposedly democratic parliament has not allowed rural people to opt out of this feudal system.

How are they getting away with it?

While people accept the necessity for regulations relating to, e.g. social distancing, the lockdown was badly planned since it failed to factor in the reliance of a large sector of the population on informal sector and piecemeal work. Hunger has escalated, together with anger at corrupt councillors stealing food for the poor. It is not inconceivable that more poor people will die of poverty-related illnesses than of the Covid-19 virus, especially if they cannot face taking HIV and TB medication without food. The government has no right to decree what legal products people may purchase to consume in the privacy of their homes, or to stop them walking on their own. Nor can their measures be justified in terms of links between trauma and violence, since it is state organs who fail to police taverns and roads properly, as happens in other democracies where governments would not dare incur the wrath of citizens by imposing such ridiculous bans. In South Africa, many simply break the law, depriving the State of desperately-needed revenue – which further feeds avaricious organised crime networks, such as those politically well-connected operators described in Jacques Pauw’s book ‘The President’s Keepers’.

This lockdown has exposed the fallacy that South Africa is a real democracy, and the one lesson everyone should learn from it is that we will never build a democracy if we allow this increasingly blatant authoritarianism to continue. 

On Wednesday 11 December six people in the Msomi home at Hammarsdale, near Durban, died, when a group of gunmen surrounded the house and opened fire on those inside it.  Similar attacks in peri-urban and traditional rural areas are not unusual. While most attacks on farmers and on politicians receive media coverage few of the murders or ordinary folk do. That it is possible for well-armed men to operate with impunity in these areas points to serious problems with policing, including intelligence, at local station and Cluster area.  These killers have access to a range of guns and seem to have no problem acquiring ammunition.  The bodies of Mhlengezi Khumalo, killed in an apparent political hit in Pietermaritzburg in February., and Gundane Mthethwa, killed in the reign of terror in eMpembeni near Richards Bay the same month, were riddled with an estimated two dozen or more bullet wounds.  There have been some positive developments in national and provincial policing in 2019 and priorities for 2020 must include improved rural safety and an intensified clampdown on illicit guns – which should start with vastly improved policing of the taxi industry.

The taxi industry, hitmen and guns

The taxi industry is associated with the deployment of hit men, including for political assassinations. It may also employ armed guards who are not necessarily PSIRA compliant. It is a threat to state security.   Many police members allegedly operate taxis or receive protection money from one or other faction, and some powerful operators are well connected politically. Convictions are few and far between, including when buses are attacked.   Despite claims by the Department of Transport that it regulates the industry without fear or favour there is a conspicuous lack of transparency in its operations, including those relating to the implementation of a new public transport system in Durban.

Mandeni was one of various areas in which taxi violence claimed several lives. In June, Siyabonga Mbonambi who had, for years, played a prominent role in a local taxi association, was gunned down.  In 2010 he had survived an attack by armed men at his rural home in which a brother and a toddler nephew died. Nothing has changed in the past decade. Those allegedly behind the violence then were linked to a long-distance association accused of operating illegally in his association’s route, with evidence of complicity on the part of certain police. The present context is one in which there are tensions around leadership within Mbonambi’s association. An informer, who was subsequently killed, named the hitmen and alleged they had been sent by a taxi rival. The only witness to the killing was Siyabonga’s brother, Sam, whose life has been in great danger since the murder. Investigators claimed that they could not trace the killers, despite reports that they were seen visiting contacts in the Mandeni area. Sam gave up his job and moved around. He was not at his home when police arrived there in September looking for him. They claimed an informer had linked him to a crime.  Only when pressed to do so did they identify themselves properly, and advised that they had come from Empangeni, a distance away. They had not notified the local Sundumbili station of their presence, which is against SAPS regulations. Sam subsequently reported to Empangeni SAPS together with his lawyer; he was not charged.  On 28 November, when Sam was at his own home, gunmen apparently sent to kill him murdered his fourteen-year old nephew who presumably saw them. At another Mbonambi home a short distance away, another nephew of Sam and Siyabonga was murdered on 14 December by men who appear to have been looking for another close relative of theirs who has also been threatened with death. The police acted swiftly and NIU members arrested the alleged hitmen at a hostel at Umlazi. Sam has finally been placed in Witness Protection.  At the end of December, one of the alleged killers of Siyabonga was arrested near Mandeni.  It is now up to investigators and prosecution to ensure they build a strong case.

The shooting of Thabiso Zulu

In 2018 the Public Protector (PP) instructed the Minister of Police to provide protection for whistle-blower and ANC stalwart Thabiso Zulu whose life has been in grave danger since 2017,  Despite two State security threat assessments confirming that Zulu’s life is in grave danger the Minister blocked the protection and referred the PP’s report for court review. Amidst continuing threats, Zulu has continued to spend most of his time locked away and moving only with people who try to protect him. Appeals to, among others, President Ramaphosa and parliament have fallen on deaf ears.   

On 25 October Zulu was warned by a security industry person that there were plans to kill him in within days. The next night he was shot and injured walking with a friend near where he was staying in Pietermaritzburg. Handguns and a rifle were used but, by the next morning, the Mountain Rise SAPS, an historically problematic station, had not secured the crime scene nor retrieved the cartridges. Why did police intelligence not have, or use, that information to pre-empt an attack?

Loss of confidence in DPP’s office

Following a failure by local police to arrest anyone for a spate of killings in eMpembeni, the office of the national commissioner arranged for a new team to report to the Cluster Office. Arrests for three separate murders followed swiftly.  Accomplices initially charged indicated that they would turn state witness, made statements, and were placed in Witness Protection, and the arrests of two members of the widely feared N family followed. Petitions with hundreds of signatures were presented to court opposing bail. The investigators did commendable work, even risking their own lives in what is an extremely dangerous area. However, in a shock decision seven months after the arrests a senior prosecutor declined to prosecute the N family members on the grounds that the two state witnesses claimed to have made statements under duress. This appears a blatant lie because they had been examined on more than one occasion by a District Surgeon, and appeared in court, and had never mentioned any abuse. What is truly incredible is that charges have not been re-instated  against the two men who had themselves faced charges, and had also perjured themselves – raising serious questions about whether people facing such charges can now avoid prosecution by turning state witness and later retracing their statements.  Community members have completely lost confidence in the prosecution service, especially as a very wealthy member of the N family had boasted during his bail application that he enjoyed a good relationship with two prosecutors, including one working in the DPP’s office.  A climate of intense fear prevails, once again, in eMpembeni,

Lessons for 2020

Rural safety of all, farmers and residents of traditional land alike, must be a priority in 2020, starting with a drastic improvement in the gathering and use of intelligence, and the monitoring by management of stations in which gunmen appear to operate with impunity.  Road-blocks of taxis, and investigations of all those involved in guarding them, could impact on the circulation of illegal guns (if no warning is given). The Firearms Unit of the SAPS should be strengthened with further personnel with proven clean records. Prosecutors also need to work with, and guide, investigators from an early stage, and not wait until investigations are nearing completion.

Note

See www.violencemonitor.com for reports on eMpembeni and Thabiso Zulu (2018/2019) and re: taxi violence. 2010 report ‘The attack on the Mbonambi family, Dendethu : An Indictment of the failure of the SAPS and KZN Transport to enforce the rule of law’

August 2019 saw the passing away of an unsung hero of the struggle for democracy and justice in South Africa, John Motlalepula Motloli.  As a serving apartheid era police member Motloli used his job as a cover to provide invaluable assistance to the ANC and to  families of MK operatives who had disappeared, or who had died at the hands of the security police, and to expose the truth of what had happened to them.  Despite being described as a ‘pillar to the new dispensation’, who ‘worked for the country’,  Motloli never received any recognition for his work from the ANC, possibly because the type of information he uncovered would have alarmed  ambitious comrades with skeletons in their own closets. Instead of accolades, Motloli, like many other former long serving black African South African Police( SAP) members, remained side-lined for promotion – yet another casualty in the new government’s inexcusable failure to transform the apartheid era police force.

Motloli was born in Orlando in 1947 but after the death of his parents in 1957  he was sent to live with family members in Mount Fletcher (Eastern Cape) where he herded their cattle.  Only in 1961 did he start primary school, but he was so intelligent that he passed the first two years combined with flying colours and despite having skipped what were then Standards 4 and 5 came first in Standard 6 (Grade 8).  However, there was no money for him to continue high school, so he spent a period working on the mines. A friend persuaded him to return to school and, at the age of 25, he matriculated at Moroko High School. After working for the Chamber of Mines for three years he joined the SAP in 1975, telling friends that the move might protect him from being targeted for his anti-apartheid sentiments.

By the 1980s he was working as a detective at the KwaDabeka SAP near Pinetown, Natal.  His investigations in the latter 1980s into state sponsored violence in the townships was to lay the foundations for his later exposure of the forces behind this violence. During his investigations into the notorious A Team who terrorised Chesterville township he discovered that they were being armed by a KwaZulu Government Deputy Minister, Samuel Jamile. With KwaDabeka colleagues he investigated Jamile for killing several Clermont residents opposed to the incorporation of the township into KwaZulu. With threats to the lives of the investigators, it was decided to hand the docket to an outside team headed by Frank Dutton and his partner Wilson Magadla, a ‘homeboy’ of Motloli’s. The Dutton team secured the conviction of Jamile and followed it with convictions of those, including police, implicated in the 1988 Trust Feed massacre. Motloli, who had also worked with Dutton, was later to join his Goldstone team of investigators. From there, in 1994, he transferred to the Special Investigation unit investigating Third Force activities headed by Jan D’Oliviera, and subsequently became involved in TRC investigations.

However, Motloli had been working on police involvement in disappearances and deaths of operative such as Stanley Bhila, Phumezo Nxiweni and Dion Cele, under the cover of other investigative work, since the late 1980s. Some of the TRC exposures were the result of his early work, which had been spurred by appeals from families of exiles who had disappeared. Cases he investigated included those in which police informers had primed grenades for use by operatives, or police had wrongly claimed that those they had shot had been robbers killed in self-defence. He was a man of few words whose quiet, unassuming manner won the confidence and trust of people who were prepared to provide information, including askaris (some of whom he assisted).  Although he was to win the confidence of some black African security police members, his investigations made him extremely unpopular with their colleagues who threatened and insulted him but, after 1990, found it more difficult to act against him, especially when he worked for the Goldstone or d’Oliviera teams.  He was a loving family man who went to great lengths to shield them from this work and when, during this period, he sensed a threat to them in the township in which they lived, he moved them to a formerly white suburban area.

Through the leads he had followed up, and the relationships he had established he knew about some of the Vlakplaas operations, including those linked to the C10 unit active in what is now KZN before they were exposed publicly. These included the 1986 killings of a group of operatives known as the Quarry Road Four, and four men in Chesterville. The late Colonel Andy Taylor and other security police were later to apply to the TRC for amnesty for the latter killings. Other disappearances and deaths for which he had done the groundwork included those of MK members Ntombi Khubeka who had been abducted by an askari from her KwaMashu home on the instructions of Vlakplaas C Section and the Natal Security police, and Portia Ndwandwe, who had been abducted from Swaziland. Their bodies were exhumed during TRC investigations as were those of some of the other missing activists. Although he had done his best to assist the Phewas of Lamontville, the bodies of Sobho Phewa and Musa Phewa, who were abducted from the township in 1987 were never found.

It was Motloli who exposed the truth about the disappearance in 1990 of Operation Vula operatives Mbuso Shabalala and Charles Ndaba after the security police spread false rumours about Ndaba having betrayed Shabalala. Although the TRC found that their bodies had been dumped in the Thukela River mouth, Motloli had continued to follow up information from a knowledgeable man he worked with in the 2000s who died after being knocked down by a vehicle, apparently deliberately.

After leaving the TRC Motloli spent several more years in the SAPS, including in Crime Intelligence.  However, he was utterly frustrated because while he remained a warrant officer the command structure to which he reported included former security policemen who had been promoted well above him. Academic research in the 1990s showed this type of skewed promotion was commonplace. The severe stress was impacting negatively on Motloli’s health, and he took early retirement. He was not the only competent, highly experienced black African police member to do so, for the same reasons.  Motloli’s exceptional work was a product of his support for the liberation struggle, and it succeeded because he was an excellent investigator who knew how to follow up leads and win the confidence of informers, including those who had killed for apartheid. Post liberation policing could have been very different had the new government recognised, rewarded, and fully supported the work of Motloli and colleagues with similar skills.

It is ironic that some of the arguments used by defenders of the Ingonyama Trust differ little from those used by the apartheid government to justify the homelands policy.  In his recent article in the Daily Maverick Mbongeleni Mazibuko unwittingly falls into this trap by drawing on discredited history and by his misuse of concepts such as culture and tradition.  He also conveniently side-steps the gross infringements of the land rights of rural residents by the Trust, and by some traditional leaders.

Most of the Ingonyama Trust land is that which constituted the KwaZulu bantustan, some of which, such as southern and far northern areas of KZN, was never part of the historic Zulu kingdom.  From its heartland north of the Thukela river, King Shaka deployed his well-trained warriors to areas much further afield to raid for cattle. In the process, people either dispersed or, in some cases, bowed to the use of force and became client chiefdoms supplying Shaka with cattle, and guarding his far- flung cattle outposts.  He did not have the political or military capacity to incorporate these areas into the kingdom. With his enemies, including within his own family, multiplying, Shaka’s position became increasingly precarious. Accompanied by armed traders from Port Natal he had vanquished his main opponents, the Ndwandwe, but internally the powerful Qwabe grouping was posing an increasing threat. This threat may have been one of the reasons that he decided to build his new homestead further away from them, at KwaDukuza (just south of the Thukela river) shortly before his ten-year reign ended with his assassination. His half-brother, Dingane, was unable to retain the type of military control Shaka had over his own subjects and the client chiefdoms outside of the kingdom, so many fled the kingdom to what was later to become the colony of Natal and others returned there from further afield.

The kingdom founded by Shaka was an amalgamation of discrete chiefdoms, and it was stratified according to historical and clan relationships to the king.  The lowest stratum comprising ‘outsider’ groupings, to which a derogatory label was applied, lived in the coastal areas or around the Thukela.  Excluded from politics, they provided menial labour and cattle tribute to the elites.  Falling into this category was the powerful Hlubi grouping who, posing an increasing threat to King Mpande, prudently migrated to the colony in 1848 to avoid the risk of an all-out war.

Contrary to what Mazibuko avers, it is  highly unlikely that the majority of the traditional leaders in what is now KZN are descendants of the clan-based groupings of the Zulu kingdom, which was itself subject to a divide-and-rule policy by the British after the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879. The forebears of many of today’s leaders had never been part of the kingdom and, in the colony, new chiefs were created by administrator Theophilus Shepstone when he found people living without any. Mission areas appointed their own. Chiefs were needed for the implementation of the indirect rule system – rule through chiefs – developed in what was then Natal, exported to other colonies, and further refined by the architects of apartheid.

The office of traditional leadership today is a product of colonialism and apartheid because, since the 19^th century, chiefs have not been ‘chiefs by their people’. The general trend in pre-colonial times was for an unpopular chief to be deposed or killed – or people might simply migrate elsewhere. However, with indirect rule they became accountable to the government which paid their salaries and, pre-1994, would be deposed if they were not politically compliant.  Democracy and accountability are still absent in many traditional areas today and it has proven virtually impossible to get the government department responsible, COGTA, to take any action against leaders who abuse their positions, or even commit crimes.

While there is a tendency to see traditional leadership as some distinctly pan-African phenomenon, it is an office which exists, or has existed, in societies all over the world at a certain stage of state formation.  Many societies in Africa did not have this system of governance. While colonising governments used the position for their own purposes, the stance taken by post-liberation governments varied.  Most retained the position, but restricted incumbents to ceremonial and developmental roles, Uganda – which had historically included different kingdoms – restricted their powers drastically, and Tanzania abolished traditional leadership. Swaziland is probably the only country in Africa in which traditional leaders have more powers than they do in South Africa.  The office is not under threat since they are recognised in Chapter 12 of the Constitution. In the mid-1990s the ANC government, which was then divided over the subject, made a serious mistake by not insisting that the incumbents could not occupy both traditional and political offices (as in Botswana). Many have allowed themselves to be used as political tools, when they could have played a far more constructive role in their communities had they been above party politics.

There is probably no word which has been as badly abused in South Africa as ‘culture’. Drawing on the ideas of Scientific Racism embodied in what was termed ‘ethnos theory’ this term was used by the apartheid government to justify, and disguise the racial basis for, homelands. Culture is simply an analytical construct used to describe what people have in common such as shared norms, values, knowledge and beliefs, which are learned. Even within a group speaking a common language what is interpreted as its culture may be highly variable. These ideas change as the socio-economic structure of the society of which they are part does, as may traditions and customs embodying these ideas. While there are regional similarities, families are the custodians of customs, which may vary from one clan to another. Contemporary Zulu identity as it is portrayed today is a product of societal changes, especially economic and political, the 20^th century. However, there is no single ‘Zulu’ identity in KZN, for many residents would identify with other historically-based groupings such as Bhaca, Hlubi, and Thonga, and others would emphasise their Ndwandwe roots (i.e. the enemies of the Zulu kingdom).

There is thus no historical basis for the privatisation of state land in the hands of the Zulu king who cannot be said to have ‘owned’ it in the past :  Contemporary ownership of land, focussing on commercial value,  should not be equated with ideas prevailing in the past when  it had very different meanings for the families who were living on it, based on intimate relationships between the living and the dead (buried on it), and the way in which these were related to the fertility of land (to meet subsistence needs).   King Zwelithini enjoys widespread support and respect in his own right – especially since he publicly distanced himself from party politics in 1994 –  not through his association with the Trust. The Board administering the trust, of which the king is the sole trustee, was appointed a few years after the Trust was established in April 1994. Prior to that it had been overseen by the king’s lawyer, the late Sdumo Mathe, with the Board taking over soon after Mathe’s untimely death. Calls to dismantle the Trust have nothing to do with a ‘clash of cultures’ but are rooted in economic realities. The Trust, through its Board,  not only contests the transfer to the government fiscus of mining royalties due to it, but acts as a virtual parallel government itself issuing leases which are often cloaked in secrecy, and which trample on the legally protected rights to the land, and the security, of those living on it.  As a result of the issuing of these leases people have lost the land they lived on, and used for subsistence, to mining companies or other business ventures. They may be removed, or face the threat of removal, from their land, as during apartheid years.  Their water becomes polluted and cattle become sick. In coal mining areas such as Somkele (near Mtubatuba) the rate of respiratory illnesses is extremely high and linked by locals to most deaths. In the kwaMzimela area homes and graves are blasted away by sand mining. There are many other examples, and despite the black empowerment rhetoric, it may be white businesspeople who benefit from Trust deals.

It is traditional leaders who give permission to the Trust to grant leases, regardless of the consequences for their subjects, who may not even know about them until they are told to move (as in eMpembeni)*._ The democratic government, which claims to represent ‘the people’, has dealt rural folk a further blow by passing legislation which will give even more powers to traditional leaders to enter into such agreements.  Not for nothing is these two pieces of legislation –  one of which amends the 2003 Act governing traditional leadership, and the other governing traditional (chiefs’) courts – referred to, with good reason, as the ‘bantustan bills’.  To avoid a further retreat into the past this legislation must be opposed at all costs.

*See other 2018 and 2019 reports on the Ingonyama Trust and on eMpembeni

Reference notes  : This report draws on a wide range of historical material,  including chapters in Duminy and Guest (eds) 1989 Natal and Zululand a New History;   Chapters in Carton, B, J Laband and J Sithole (eds) 2009 Zulu Identities; Laband J 2017 The Assassination King Shaka ; Wright J 2016 ‘Making Identities in the Thukela-Mzimvubu Region cc1770-1940 in Hamilton C and N Leibhammer Tribing and Untribing the Archive   

Other references include academic publications on culture, traditiion and traditional leadership. See , for example, Boonzaier E and J Sharp (eds) 1989  South African Keywords : Th uses and abuses of political concepts

For the first time in South Africa’s history, people of all races queued to exercise their democratic right to vote in the watershed elections of April 1994.  How do our recent 8 May elections compare with those of a quarter of century ago, and others which followed them, in terms of being ‘free and fair’. Did the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) behave in a nonpartisan, professional manner?  Were political parties able to campaign freely? Were voters able to vote for the party of their choice without fear of intimidation, or retribution if they were deemed to have voted for the ‘wrong’ party.  Comparisons between 1994 and 2019, and the years in between, show that we have indeed made tremendous progress in the past twenty-five years..

The four-year negotiation ride to the 1994 elections had been a bumpy one. As the election date approached the IFP which, together with its right-wing allies, had been demanding increased devolution of powers to provinces, was refusing to participate, and warned that it was entering a stage of ‘resistance politics’. The political violence of the 1980s and early 1990s escalated to unprecedented levels and the threat of civil war loomed. By the end of March 1994 a minimum of 1 149 people had died, mainly in KZN and to a lesser extent, in what is now Gauteng in the first three month of the year. When the IFP announced, on 19 April, that it would participate the country heaved a collective sigh of relief. Although the vast majority of the three hundred plus April deaths in KZN occurred before that announcement, and despite the introduction of a State of Emergency, attacks, including on party agents who were canvassing, continued until the eleventh hour. For logistical reasons the elections in KZN were run over three days and, relative to the mayhem that had preceded them, and despite a great deal of intimidation, they were reasonably peaceful. 

However, there were glaring irregularities and a great deal of evidence of rigging. Prince Sifiso Zulu, who was acting in a co-ordinating, administrative capacity for the IEC in Empangeni, found himself under siege and fled to Durban with a large pile of incriminating documents. An internal IEC memorandum recommending that the elections in the northern part of the province be declared null and void was ignored. It is known that the votes in some areas were not even tallied, and it was widely believed that the outcome of the election stemmed from a political settlement.

The violence continued post-election, especially in northern and lower south coast areas, leading to the first local government elections, held in most parts of the country in 1995, being scheduled for 1996 in KZN. These elections proceeded relatively peacefully, due mainly to saturation deployment of security forces, including the SANDF.  However, large numbers of people were unable to participate because they had been displaced from their homes by the violence.  Amidst numerous allegations of voting irregularities and gross intimidation, especially in rural areas, the elections appeared more free and fair in some areas than in others.

These patterns of widespread intimidation and violence, including deaths, in the run up to elections, were to continue through the 1999 (another violent year) and 2004 national, and 2000 and 2006 local government, elections.  Allegations of voter fraud generally decreased with successive elections.  Rural areas remained extremely vulnerable to violence. Election days, while not incident free, were largely peaceful.  Amidst allegations of partisan and inadequate policing, party agents in rural areas were also vulnerable, fearing to remain at their stations after dark unless there was increased police presence.  KZN Monitor reports for these periods detail a litany of complaints of threat and intimidation, and numerous calls for police intervention.

A consistently dangerous area was Macambini (near Mandeni), where a notorious traditional leader and gross human rights violator continued to threaten and intimidate opposition party candidates (one obtained an interdict) and even IEC officials.  In the 2006 local government elections ANC candidate Sibongile Zungu was threatened with death, and allegations of voting irregularity in her ward were documented in four affidavits; the ANC declined to act, or to offer any protection to Mrs Zungu.  Her home was subsequently razed to the ground. The family, miraculously, escaped death, but lost everything.

By 2009 the situation leading up to, and during, the national elections had improved, but there still numerous documented incidents of threat and intimidation, including against COPE members after its split from ANC.   2011 saw the emergence of the NFP which split from the IFP and a period of conflict between the two parties continued for a few years. In the run up to the local government elections that year two prominent ANC eThekwini councillors – Sbusiso Sibiya and Wiseman Mshibe  – were assassinated, and the elections themselves were marked by intra-ANC conflict over nominations and alleged manipulation of party lists.  Those irregularly nominated included the current mayor of Durban, Zandile Gumede.

The 2014 national elections saw further improvement. However, there were at least twenty murders (excluding Glebelands deaths) in the seven months preceding the August 2016 local government elections. Fourteen of these deaths appeared linked to contestation along factional lines in the ANC, and government corruption.  Prior to these elections protest actions had become increasingly violent and destructive

Although politically-linked murders have continued, canvassing by party officials in the run up to the recent elections has proceeded smoothly.  One exception was a brawl between IFP and ANC representatives in the Lindelani area near Shakaville township in KwaDukuza, a historically volatile site where an ANC supporter was killed on 2014 election day. There was one reported death during the recent elections, that of an IFP supporter in eMatimatolo (another closely contested area), who was allegedly shot by an ANC supporter. A NFPs supporter was injured.

It was violent and destructive protest action which replaced inter-party tensions and conflict during the recent elections, and was sufficiently disruptive to interfere with voting in some areas because of damage to infrastructure and the blocking of roads.

Minor glitches were reported, but the IEC must be congratulated for running substantially free and fair elections. Good planning around police deployment also played an important role, with one seasoned south coast election monitor reporting that they had handled a stand-off between EFF and ANC supporters at one station well.  There were, however, complaints about insufficient numbers being deployed at eMpembeni(Richards Bay) where people had been scared to vote after an alleged murderer was released on bail.  Two days after voting, four people, including a young child and a high school learner, were brutally murdered in that area.  Another crucial factor in the success of these elections was the presence of well-trained observers, many of whom were deployed by churches.

We have good reason to be proud of progress made in past quarter century. However, the real test for the incoming government will be whether, when 2021 elections take place, protests will still dominate the polls – of whether we shall see a steady decline in their number and severity because of improved service delivery.