Dispossession and Grave Relocation in South Africa

• In Event: Reexamining Minority Religious Rites in the Context of Crises (Virtual Session)

Abstract

Former labour tenant families who once lived on Tweefontein and surrounding agricultural farmland in the Mpumalanga Province in South Africa- were relocated in 2015 to make way for Glencore’s open-cast colliery mine. Not only did they lose their land rights, homes and land-based livelihoods- they also lost the grave sites which they buried their loved ones. A drive from Johannesburg to the N12 highway, and the R555 exit road, lead to Glencore’s offices, where a large boom-gate is controlled by security guards who regulate and inspect every vehicle that wishes to enter the company’s premises. A high wired fence surrounds these premises and barricades the graves that are located where the proposed open-cast mine will operate. The mine’s guards drive around, on patrol, in bakkies on the lookout for unauthorised activities and suspicious characters. The security guards are tasked to demand
entrance permits from visitors, to issue warnings to the uninvited, and if necessary, to escort people off the fenced property. In effect, the ancestors have found themselves barricaded. And it is this state of affairs, of “The Barricaded Ancestors,” that stands as an exemplar of what I term “Lawful Exclusion”.

This paper explores the actual process of grave relocation as an aspect of dispossession and speaks to the implications of Glencore’s exploitation and disregard of the provisions in both the National Heritage Resources Act, no. 25 of 1999 (NHRA), the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) 28 of 2002, and the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996 (IPILRA). Focus falls on how the lack of clarity about notions of consultation and participation in the two sets of legislation are exploited by the mine, creating new forms of exclusion within the confines of the law in the post-apartheid era.

Author

• Dineo Skosana, SWOP