Xolobeni — PICTURE: DAILY DISPATCH On June 6 1960, the Pondo people paid with their blood on Ngquza Hill for rejecting an aggressive attempt to carve up their land and create Transkei independence. They are at it again, 56 years later, fighting to fend off another hostile attempt to take their land. The land seems fertile, rich in minerals. Pristine rivers flow into the Indian Ocean. Adults work in the hot sun, tending their green fields of maize, amadumbe (a kind of potato) and beans, surrounded by the lush greenery and the ocean to the east. On weekends, barefoot girls in tattered clothes, play games that have been played by generations, using old stockings and tins, while boys fashion a soccer ball out of anything that’s soft and won’t hurt their bare feet.Other than their carefree laughter, the peace is punctuated only by the sound of waterfalls and of waves crashing against rocks, sending up spray.But this peace lasts only during the day. On many a night the people of Xolobeni,...
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