Anna Mamorabela walks through the scattered rubble of what used to be her family home. She carefully steps on sheets of corrugated iron lying over debris. She walks along a passage into one of the broken structures and rests her hands against the wood that once supported the wall.We are treated like nothing,” she says, her gloomy eyes wandering around the destroyed homestead.
The investigation centres on the farm owner, Limpopo property mogul Michael Neophitou Toulou, who, in October last year, instituted court action against the people living on a portion of the farm. By the time the roar of the bulldozer went silent, five homesteads — brick houses and earth-built huts — lay in ruins. A lifestyle, a legacy dating back more than a century, was flattened. Five families that had lived together for generations no longer had a place to call home.
Anna’s aunt, Maite Maake, managed to salvage her ID document before the bulldozer came in a dawn raid. She wants her home rebuilt before she dies. On October 18 Judge Jody Kollapen interdicted the residents from demarcating stands or allocating them to anyone, or constructing new structures, and from setting fire to any portion of the property or vehicles and any property belonging to Toulou.
In November the farm residents protested outside Toulou’s properties in Modjadjiskloof, demanding that he rebuild their demolished homes. They argued that the court never granted an order for any structure on the property to be demolished or that anyone be evicted. In the meantime, life for Maake and other residents continues to be a daunting challenge. Their furniture remains trapped under heaps of rubble. Some of the items they managed to salvage during the unlawful demolition of their homes are lying in the open, exposed to the rain and the boiling sun of the lowveld.
There are no reliable numbers; this survey, with the estimate by nongovernmental organisations of a total of two million people evicted, has been disputed by farmer organisations.
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