Programme News
6 December 2013
(Press release)
It is difficult to come to terms with the news that the world’s most revered statesman and human rights activist is gone. As is so often said, he now belongs to the ages.
Although an old man, he seemed immortal. But Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a man, a man whose dedication to the struggle against Apartheid and injustice, and opposition to oppression moulded him into a beacon and a...
22 October 2013
(Press release)
In compliance with the Constitutional Court judgment of 9 October 2012, the parties held a series of intensive meetings and in June 2013 considered comprehensive packages to deal with the allocation of alternative accommodation pending the resolution on the longterm plan for Schubart Park residents and the future of the complex itself.
The process of negotiations between the City and erstwhile...
22 October 2013
(News)
Displaced residents of the Schubart Park flats in Pretoria central say they are unhappy with the rate at which the City of Tshwane is relocating them following a Constitutional Court order.
On Monday Albert Mashimbye, chairman of the Schubart Park Residential Committee, said some people who were forcibly moved from the dilapidated complex were still out in the cold.
"The timeframe is the...
11 October 2013
(News)
The home affairs department will visit farming communities across South Africa to inspect the immigration status of workers, Minister Naledi Pandor told an Agri SA summit on Thursday.
The presence and employment of illegal and undocumented people poses a grave national security risk, Pandor said in Pretoria.
"One of the things I have always argued for is that everyone in South Africa should...
25 September 2013
(News)
It is a question often dodged by government leaders at press conferences: Why not "ring-fence" a part of the royalties and taxes clawed from mining companies and earmark them to be spent on local communities?
Shrug.
National Treasury's spoils from mining - some R27-billion last year, according to the Chamber of Mines - goes into a general pool and is then thinly spread from Port...
25 September 2013
(News)
Trouble is brewing in Mokopane, Limpopo, where a community is fighting the establishment of what is expected to be the world's biggest platinum mine.
Community members in several villages accuse Canadian mining group Ivanhoe Mines of attempting to shove them aside to make way for its Platreef mine.
Ivanplats, an Ivanhoe subsidiary, is prospecting around the villages of Kgobudi, Magongoa,...
10 September 2013
(News)
The Baphiring community in North West could yet have land that they were dispossessed of restored to them after a ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeal on Friday.
The court set aside the Land Claims Court judgment of 2010 that the restoration of the land to the community was "not feasible".
It also held that the state was obliged to lead evidence regarding the cost of restoration...
8 September 2013
(News)
People who were relocated from the village of Ga-Pila in Mokopane, formerly Potgietersrus, are accusing mining giant Anglo Platinum (Amplats) of a litany of broken promises.
Amplats asked the villagers to make way for a mining dump. They were shifted to the nearby Sterkwater.
Now they say Amplats short-changed them on the relocation fee and failed to provide them with services they promised...
6 September 2013
(Press release)
In a landmark judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal on land claims, the court today upheld the appeal of the Baphiring community of the North West.
Lawyers for Human Rights have welcomed the judgment. The Baphiring community, who bought some 7 500 hectares of land near Koster between 1908 and 1913, were forcibly removed from their land during Apartheid under the 1913 Native Land Act. The...
30 August 2013
(News)
Prospecting for one of the world's largest platinum mines has already taken farming land from a Limpopo community.
Their future is uncertain and people are getting angrier about living in limbo
In 1994, most South Africans opened the gates to freedom. In that year, Frank Mofokeng* lost his ancestral plot and his only source of income.
One morning he woke up and walked the few kilometres to...