DEAR Editor,-
With regards to the article ‘Squatter showdown’ in last week’s Herald, I don’t know the details of this South Coast KZN farmer and squatter conflict, but I would like to make a suggestion. It has been tried before in Northern KZN and it is happening in the Cape.
In the early 90s in KZN, there was a lot of inter-racial conflict and political (IFP/UDF/ANC) tension between the Dukaduka farmers, the forest squatters (so called land invaders), and the permanent Dukaduka, St Lucia township residents and the town of Mtubatuba. It took more than two years to ‘negotiate’ a deal that holds to this day. I am wondering if it cannot be done here?
Before I get to the serious suggestion and on a lighter note, during the negotiation period in Northern KZN (1998/1999), which included building and upgrading the road to Mozambique (Lubumbo Spacial Development Programme), and in order to ‘introduce’ the ‘negotiators’ to each other on a social level, we sealed the deal with a kiss, as it were, by arranging an international ‘acoustic and traditional’ music festival on the beach in St Lucia.
By the way, the idea of producing a ‘conflict concert’ is an old Afrikaner idea from the coal mines: Invite the warring parties in the community to arrange a ‘langarm dans en konsert’.
Under the directorship of Andrew Zaloumis for the Lubumbo Spacial Development Programme and St Lucia Wildlife Sanctuary, we basically applied the same theory and produced the ‘Living Treasures’ music festival, involving all the ‘role players’ over two years. This included the town councils of St Lucia, Mtubatuba and Richard’s Bay, together with the residents and squatters of Dukaduka, who all participated in helping us set up to produce and even manage the ‘Living Treasures’ music festival.
But, back to the ‘serious’ business of ‘the farmer and so-called squatter’ impasse. We would have to be really dumb to not know what will happen to all of us when people really get hungry. So, in a similar way to how the Northern KZN ‘squatter problem’ was solved, can the farmers not come to some arrangement with these squatters by parcelling off a small piece of land, and in a formal, open public contract, allow them to manage and farm for their own needs?
There would be a time and numbers limit, of course, but the ‘new farmers’ would have to be responsible for making their piece of land productive and take care of security, in exchange for instructions, equipment, seed, etc, they could perhaps assist the farmer? It would not only be of benefit to the homeless and the farmers in the long run, and in fact help to prevent crime, but it would create goodwill between the races down here on the South Coast and perhaps set an example for the rest of the country to follow. Urgently!
DAVID MARKS
