The South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) is being used by the mining industry to write traditional communities out of the history of South Africa, leaving the country without heritage, identity or dignity, according to a report by Bench Marks Foundation.
 
In a major study of the rural community of Magobading in rural Sekhukhuneland in the Limpopo Province, BM accuses SAHRA of “preferring the gaudy signage of mining corporations…. to all references to our past”.
 
“Life before and during mining” is a report on the long-term effects of the relocation of the community of Magobading in 2002 as a result of mining activity by Anglo Platinum. The report says its review of heritage surveys submitted to the Department of Mineral Resources and SAHRA by Anglo Platinum fails to identify the important landmarks that inform the script of traditional/customary communities.
 
One such type of disregarded landmark is the lithophone, or musical rock, that is found in the area. Traditionally used as gongs to communicate across distances and for rituals, the rocks may also have been considered to have sacred, spiritual powers. “Clearly, money sounds more loudly than these rocks (lithophones), as SAHRA almost invariably gives permission for mining to proceed. Bench Marks Foundation has yet to learn of any mining application turned down by SAHRA,” the report says.
 
The study criticises legislation relating to the relocation of ancestors’ graves, which is governed by three Acts: The National Heritage Resources Act (Act No. 25 of 1999), the Human Tissue Act (Act No. 65 of 1983), and the Ordinance on Excavations (Ordinance No. 12 of 1980).
 
“These three Acts date back to the apartheid era and are not in keeping with the democratic changes that have taken place in the country,” according to the study.
 
The Magobading community, the report says, remains “concerned” about the manner in which their graves have been relocated, the manner in which the grave yard in Magobading is being maintained, and by the remains of people buried in yards in the villages they were relocated from, but whose graves, being ancient, could not be relocated to the new burial site. It points out the important place of land and ancestor graves in traditional/customary communities: “The land defined the household. Depriving such communities of their ‘ancestral lands’… is to deprive them of their ‘title deeds’ which are the graves of their ancestors.
 
“The law fails to understand that ancestral graves in fact represent the claim of communities to their ancestral lands, a claim that predates even the formation of the geographical and political entity called South Africa.”
 
In a typical Pedi town, or Motse/Kgôrô, deceased family members are buried inside the enclosure of the yard of the household, or in a cemetery located inside the village.
 
As one informant told the research team: “Our ancestors are a part of us. We always want them close by.” For a relocation, consideration thus needs to be given to the place of graves and ancestors in the living culture of the affected. In addition, in terms of the Human Tissues Act, human remains can only be handled by a registered undertaker or by an institution declared under the Act.
 
The study comments: “Most registered undertakers have no appreciation for the culture, anthropology or sociology of the impacted communities. As a community members noted, ‘It is very undignified to haggle over the costs and price of the relocation of graves’.”
 
The report is also highly critical of the layout of the village to which the community was moved. “Anglo Platinum completely disregarded the social spatial arrangements required for the effective functioning of a traditional customary community.
 
“Magobading cannot be considered a customary village; it is instead a typical grid pattern township. It is impossible to conduct customary rituals and ceremonies in the spaces allocated to the residents of Magobading. The research team attended a wedding ceremony in GaNchabeleng and, from the experience, understood the importance of large stands to accommodate guests, tents, communal cooking, the ritual slaughtering of animals for the event, the allocation of space for older men, women, youth, etc. The same would apply to funerals.”
 
“Effectively the relocation of people from three different villages to Magobading and the obvious disregard for living culture and heritage can simply be described as a continuation of colonial and apartheid arrogance towards rural communities.”
 
The BM report is particularly scathing about the heritage audit that was done prior to the relocation of the three villages to Magobading, which it says consists of a ten-page summary “remarkably empty of anthropological and archaeological content…. No mention is made of the problems associated with dislocation that resettlement would cause and there is no consideration of living culture or the anthropology of the impacted communities.”
 
In its recommendations in the report, BM says that a proper national cultural and heritage audit should be conducted before the indigenous identity is “entirely erased from the South African landscape and communities are degraded by mining.”