Labour tenancy claims bring deep history into the present

Author: YVES VANDERHAEGHEN

Judge Mokotedi Mpshe will be asked next week to appoint a “Special Master” to see that the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, and Minister Gugile Nkwinti do their jobs.

THE past is persistent, its debris strewn across the landscape and through wrecked lives. Thabiso Mbhense spends his hours trying to put things in order, and lives back together. An attorney with the Legal Resources Centre, he is working on 30-odd cases, some big, some small, not all of them making headlines.

 

Mbhense lists some of the cases he’s fighting.

Down on the Wild Coast, the Xolobeni community is pitted against both an Australian mining company that wants to mine titanium, and traditional leaders they feel have sold them out. The proposed open-cast mine, they say, will drive them off their fields, destroy the graves of ancestors and ruin their health. There has already been blood, and the fight ahead is likely to be long and vicious.

 

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