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Date : 20/09/2004
Source: Northern Cape Provincial Government
Title: T Joemat-Pettersson: Handing over compensation to claimants of Port Nolloth Old Location


SPEECH BY MEC T JOEMAT-PETTERSSON AT THE OCCASION OF THE HANDING OVER OF COMPENSATION TO THE CLAIMANTS OF PORT NOLLOTH OLD LOCATION, 20 September 2004

Hon Mayor
Hon MPLs and Councillors
Hon Land Commissioner
Representatives of the Department
The Land Commissioners Office
Representatives of community organisations
Comrades and Friends
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a great honour for me to address you as a representative of the provincial ANC led-government on the day when we bring some form of justice to the people of Port Nolloth Old Location.

The claimants and the community of Port Nolloth Old Location, like many communities in our country are victims of forced removals which the Apartheid regime unleashed on our people.

The policy of forced removals was designed to remove Africans from fertile land, mineral rich land in order for European Settlers and their descendants to occupy it and prosper on it. Our African communities were relocated to barren and rocky stretches of land called native reserves. Some were later called National States and so-called Independent Homelands.

These forced removals were particularly brutal as communities were violently uprooted from their ancestral land. Those who resisted were often beaten, imprisoned and even killed in the process.

Their livestock was either killed or confiscated without compensation and their fields were destroyed. Their places of worship, homesteads, schools and businesses were bulldozed and flattened. Thousands of our people were in this manner condemned to lives of misery and abject poverty.

In the urban areas our people used to live in vibrant and culturally rich mixed communities. Our African people were subjected to the same fate like their rural counterparts.

They were forcefully removed to so-called Bantu locations, coloured locations and so on. In the process blood families were divided as a result of the arbitrary racial classification to achieve the objectives of the diabolical Group Areas Act. The consequences of this policy are still very visible in our cities as most previously non-white areas are located far from city centres and work places.

The history of the Old Port Nolloth Location is a telltale of what many communities all over our province and the rest of the country had to endure. The development of this Town began in 1869 after the discovery of copper in the area. A railway track was built to rail the copper ore to Port Nolloth from where it was shipped to Cape Town.

This resulted in more work opportunities, which led to many people moving to Port Nolloth from the inland areas. The discovery of diamonds just off the coast north of this Town in 1927 resulted in a huge diamond rush. Just like Kimberley, the Town became a major attraction for job seekers and fortune hunters.

The black, coloured, San and the Khoi people settled in the area, which would later be known as Port Nolloth Old Location. In 1957, Port Nolloth became a municipality and it was expected of the Old Location dwellers to pay fees to the municipality. Many of the claimant

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