EXTRACT
In all three places the men offering or selling stands were not ANC or EFF. They said they act with the authority of the City of Tshwane, but didn’t have titles. They were “entrepreneurs”.
Our fourth occupation was near my mother’s village, New Eersterus. Shacks were being put up at a very quick rate. Later on in the day, driving back to Joburg, I passed by Wallmansthal, a settlement whose land restitution was finalised in 2007. The original, black, owners are still not back on the land. Instead, for the umpteenth time, the land is being sold off by “entrepreneurs” at R8,000 a stand.
What’s going on? Well, 28 years after a whole wave of Mandela villages were born across SA, it is clear that there is still hunger for land, certainly urban land. What I saw may be led by unscrupulous “entrepreneurs”, but they are responding to a real need.