KuGompo land claimants die waiting as 26-year restitution project stalls

More than 2,000 beneficiaries of the West Bank Land Restitution Project in kuGompo, in the Buffalo City Metro, have waited almost 30 years for houses without a single unit being built, and some of the original claimants have died in the interim.

The project, situated about half a kilometre south of the King Phalo Airport, was intended to provide residential erven along with a sports field and churches for families forcibly removed from West Bank under the Group Areas Act between 1962 and 1965.

Brendan Bussack, a second-generation "West Banker", said most of the original claimants had died waiting. "The original claimants, the people who have looked forward to being resettled in West Bank are busy dying out. There are very few left. It's now us who have no link, other than a generational link, that have to take over this thing," he said.

Bussack said the Buffalo City Metro had failed to properly interpret and implement a 2000 plan to deal with the land invasion, which he argued holds up the internal services and plots that could be transferred to beneficiaries. Sam Harris, who was removed from West Bank in the 1960s at the age of 15, said only two brothers remain in his family and they are still waiting to go to "the promised land".

Nkosinathi Sikobi, an executive member of the Nongqongqo Land Restitution Claim, which also represents beneficiaries, said the municipality had failed to execute an eviction order after the land was invaded in 2020, and that housing officials did not properly understand the settlement agreement or the social compact signed with claimants in 2008.

People who occupied the land said they had nowhere else to go and must also be accommodated. Siyabonga Gqaji, who is contesting a ward in November's local government elections for the Economic Freedom Fighters, said the land had been unoccupied for 20 years before they moved in out of desperation, and rejected claims that the occupiers were holding up the project.