Community to return to their roots nearly 60 years later
Cape Town - At the age of 71, Ann Tomlinson-Ntebe can still recall the words of her grandmother: “I am not going to live anywhere else.” She and 86 other claimants are part of a land restitution claim in Protea Village, Bishopscourt.
Tomlinson-Ntebe cherishes the photographs of herself and parents during their days in Protea Village.
“I am one of six children born to parents William and Sonia Tomlinson. We lived with our paternal grandparents, William and Maria Tomlinson.
“Our roots are like the roots of the big oak trees, it is our birthplace.
“We know our footprints are in Protea Village, they are in Kirstenbosch Drive, from the Liesbeeck River to the Good Shepherd Church, to Kirstenbosch Gardens.
“In 1967 were driven out of our homes by a political system who denied our rights.
“We lived opposite the property of the Anglican bishop. Strangely, we could only enter the grounds when the main gate was open.
“My paternal grandmother was such a dear, soft-hearted soul. She died literally three weeks before those horrible big lorries fetched us and dumped us in Heideveld on the God-forsaken sands of the Cape Flats.
“I remember so vividly, she said: ‘I am not going to live anywhere else’.”
Tomlinson-Ntebe was on the Protea Village Action Committee (ProVac) from its inception in 1995. It lodged their land claim in 1995.
Of the 132 families who lodged the claim, 86 opted for restitution of their rights to the land.
In 2006, the claim was officially granted, with the National Department of Public Works and the City of Cape Town awarding erven 212 and 242 in Bishopscourt to the Protea Village Community.
The development will see the community return to their ancestral home in Bishopscourt, following their successful 1995 restitution claim.
The community were the first to settle on the land, residing there for generations until the Group Areas Act forcefully displaced them between 1959 and 1970.
After their claim was successfully lodged in 1995, some of the displaced families opted for compensation.
Eddie Andrews, the City’s deputy mayor and Mayco member for spatial planning and environment, said R30 million had been set aside for the construction of houses on a site which had been allocated for claimants, and that the process was ongoing, with development to begin by next year.
“A memorandum of agreement was entered into between the City of Cape Town, the National Department of Land Reform and Rural Development, the Protea Village Communal Property Association, and the SA National Biodiversity Institute,” he explained.
“In terms of the memorandum of agreement, the City agreed to make a portion of erf 212, Bishopscourt, available for restitution purposes.
“A number of other points were covered, for example those relating to the preservation and enhancing the environmental assets of the sites.
“The estimated cost of bulk and external services amounts to approximately R30m.
“This funding will be made available by grant funding from the state via the Urban Settlement Grant Funding.
The total number of erven created will be 136.
“The Protea Village project team approached me to facilitate and co-ordinate discussions to ensure that the deadline for the implementation of bulk services by the City is in place by the end of the year.
“Proper lines of communication have been established with all the relevant directorates to ensure that the end-of-the-year deadline is achieved.”
Chairperson of the Protea Village Communal Property Association, Barry Ellman, said Protea Village represented a first-of-its-kind land restitution project in South Africa.
“It uses an innovative cross-subsidisation business plan, which has the community selling private residential stands on one side of Kirstenbosch Drive to fund high-quality homes for returning residents on the other side.”
The oldest claimant is Kate Davids who was born in 1936. Another, Kevin Maxwell, 60, was just aged four when his grandparents and parents were forcefully removed.
Thamsanqa Mchunu of the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure said according to their records, they no longer owned the property. “We used to own Erf 242 Bishopscourt but in January 2018 we released the site to DALRRD for a land claim and Erf 212-re Bishopscourt, according to Deeds, is owned by the City of Cape Town,” he said.