After a seven-year occupation of a section of the Union Buildings lawn, the last members of a Khoisan camp have been evicted by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure.
They responded to their eviction by crying out to their ancestors − and offering marijuana joints to officials.
“There were two community members who were smoking quite a number of joints while we were there,” the Department’s spokesperson Lennox Mabaso told News24. Officials confirmed that the community had been growing marijuana plants on the Union Buildings lawn. The plants would also be removed in order to rehabilitate the site. An illegal water connection that the community had constructed has to be dismantled.
Chickens and a goat were placed with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and would be returned to their owners once they had relocated.
The Department spokesman said that while recognising that the conduct of the community members was unlawful, it had persuaded them to leave rather than forcibly evicting them.
The Department obtained a High Court order to evict about 20 Khoisan from their Union Buildings camp in December, but did not execute that order because the group’s leader and his wife had been involved in a car crash on 11 January. It said it had waited a month before executing the eviction order out of respect for the community and their loss.
The negotiation process included offering camp members transport back to their homes in the Northern Cape and Gqeberha, and informing them about how they could lodge claims for land they alleged had been taken from them.
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