Claimants sign for land
2008-01-31
May Saal
THE eight-year wait for land restitution by Paarl residents who were forcibly removed from their properties in central Paarl during the Apartheid years, has ended. A Memorandum of Understanding regarding the return of the current site of La Rochelle High School hockey field in Breda Street to the land claimants was signed at the Drakenstein municipal chambers on Monday. This agreement was signed by representatives of the land claimants (members of a mutual benefit society who with their descendants now a group of nearly 400 people), the Land Claims Commission, the Department of Public Works and the Department of Education. A representative of the school governing body attended the ceremony with a legal advisor, but left before the agreement was signed. The 2,3 hectares of land, where a large number of houses were demolished during forced removals in the 1960’s, is now worth about R10 million. Land claimants are to form a legal entity and developed it as a commercial property. Moutie Richards, who signed the agreement on behalf of the nearly 400 claimants, said they had waited a long time for this event. “The claim started in 1995. We didn’t want the money. We wanted our land back to go home,” an emotional Richards said at the ceremony. The regional land claims commissioner of the Western Cape, Beverly Jansen, said that it had been a hard task to get to this point. “I must however congratulate this claimants for hanging in there. A lot of land claimants are poor and most of them take the little they get for their land,” Jansen said. The Minister of Transport and Public Works, Marius Fransman, expressed his concern that it had taken so long for justice to be done. “This process needs to be fast-tracked. Why was the upgrading of these fields allowed, knowing that there is a land claim on this field?” Fransman wanted to know. The Minister of Education, Cameron Dugmore, said that the school governing body was unwilling to sign, due to concerns they have concerning future hockey facilities for the school. “The land claimants may enter a lease agreement with the school governing body until development of the property starts. “But if we do not sign today, we will delay the process further and we do not want to do this. “We will continue to engage with the school governing body and hope they will not be an obstacle in this process. “We will establish alternative sports fields for the school.” According to the agreement, the land claimants will form a steering committee under the auspices of the Land Claims Commission which will oversee the transfer of the land within five months, after which the land may be leased for sports purposes until development starts. According to the agreement, the Municipality has the discretion to provide and develop an alternate sports field for the school once the claim has been settled. Gert Combrink, chairman of La Rochelle High’s governing body, commented: “We have no objection to relinquishing the land, as long as an alternative sports field is supplied - but the Memorandum does not give us any guarantees. “We also have a problem that the claimants were not prepared to give us a lease of longer than 12 months. It will take longer than 12 months to develop an alternate site for a sports field. “It is not only La Rochelle High who uses this field for hockey and athletics. Students from La Rochelle Primary, Boys’ Primary and Labori also play hockey here. “As soon as we have a legally binding document assuring us of viable alternative sports facilities, we wil sign.”
More
News
|
