Written by Roger Young. Images by Luke Daniel.
Source: Mahala, print issue #1, pp. 23–25.
If we treat people as they are, they will stay as they are. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. – Goethe.
In spring the arum lily sellers appear all over Cape Town. I knew they’d be at the traffic light as I approached. I had my window down and was trying to call one of them over when the hawkers began to scatter; not all of them, the rose sellers, the joke traders and the Scooters pamphlet girl stood firm. But the men and their arums ran. They had little chance; the police had approached from both sides. They were hustled and dragged without so much as a question, their flowers now in police hands. I asked a cop, leaning out of breath against the traffic light pole, what they had done.
“The lilies,” he said. “They’re not allowed to sell them.”
It seemed heavy handed. There were assumptions at work here; that the lily sellers were obviously breaking the law, that they had obtained the flowers illegally, that they deserved this treatment. It didn’t take much research to discover how deeply the lilies were connected to the land in Constantia on which the original arum lily farmers lived for generations. Land that is locked in a bureaucratic land restitution quagmire; expensive, expansive plots nestled between the upper class mansions of Constantia.
The arum lily is an unprotected wildflower. Picking and selling wildflowers is illegal in the Western Cape unless you have a permit. In spring 2010 the Cape Argus published an article supporting the notion that the picking of arum’s was endangering the arum lily micro frog.
Moses Jaftha, a flower grower in the Constantia valley’s green belt, says he has, in all his years of flower growing, “never seen this frog.” Back when Moses lived on Strawberry Lane before the forced removals, his mother used to pick and sell lilies when the crops were low, “to put food on the table.” He is one of the many people waiting for his land claim to be settled. While he waits he rents land from the council to grow flowers.
“Those that wanted money, they got paid out already.” He says. “We who want land, I don’t know. I don’t have much hope.”
Jaftha has an air of fatalism. He sits in his wooden hut next to the equestrian training grounds and sells flowers to the residents of Constantia. He knows that the land he grew up on is unobtainable. It’s now a long row of upper class houses with SUV’s in the garages. Many of his customers are people who live in those houses. All of this he accepts with a shrug. When the Land Restitution Act was passed in 1994 he had hope. Now he is merely weary. He doesn’t even know what land he would be getting if it ever came to pass, and if he would even have the right to occupy it. He has been waiting since 1996.
Then, long after the lily season had ended, the City of Cape Town website declared that the arum lily micro frog does not actually exist. It goes on to claim that the other species of frog are being threatened by development and not by flower sales. And then tries to justify the clampdown on people selling lilies because they may also try sell you a protea.
The endangered frog fiction seems to stem from a wilful misreading of the facts. It’s an us versus them way of thinking that looks for reasons to distance oneself from the ubiquitous “other”. A sense of misplaced upper class entitlement that seeks to sideline and criminalise the kind of people who might be moving in next door, in order to justify one’s indignation at the horror of the poor.
The land claimants are used to this kind of patronizing sidelining, they know how the people of Constantia have always viewed coloured people. During interviews three separate claimants brought up the fact that, in the time before the removals, the Paddasvlei police station closed down because of the lack of crime. We are a peaceful people, they seemed to urge, all we want is our land back so that we can return to farming. It’s being in this position, knowing that the upper classes have, through years of generalisation, criminalized your race, that makes people run when they’re selling flowers at a traffic light. They know that guilt is already assumed.
The entire question of the land claim is exasperated by a sort of suburban ennui, a lack of desire to upset the status quo. The residents of Constantia, have no desire for the empty plots between their houses to be handed over to people that they have always, historically, mistrusted. In 2008 when MP Marius Fransman spearheaded a housing development plan for Porter Estate near Tokai, Constantia residents reacted furiously. Arguing that low cost housing will invariably devalue their property.
However the Constantia Hills Resident Association (CHRA) is taking a different approach “It’s incredibly sad that this is not being resolved fast enough,” says Liz Brunette. “We only came into this two years ago. You must understand the frustration, some of these people have been waiting for eighteen years.” But how does the average Constantia resident feel? “With very few exceptions, the residents are ready to welcome the land claimants back to their land.” But then why do the CHRA need to be involved? “There was a group of people who were very interested in the future of those properties. It’s on the border of Constantia Hills and it affects us.”
It’s obvious that the CHRA want to see the right thing happen but their perception of land use is probably very different to that of the claimants. Brunette says that “As soon as they have land, they have an asset. How they realise that is their choice.”
Does she think subsistence farming is possible in the Constantia region?
“The Constantia of fifty years ago is gone” she replies, “If they wanted to they could apply for zoning, of course, but this is a residential area now and the land in question is zoned for a school.”
The deadly assumption embedded in the Goethe quote at the beginning of this article suggests that one set of people might think they know what’s best for another.
Constantia is fertile; it’s why the land claimant’s ancestors farmed there. It is in a unique position to have small organic farms interspersed between upmarket houses. This would be a huge benefit to all. The claimants would have their land, the residents would have access to locally produced organic food and through this process, the traditionally estranged could, on a small scale, be given the opportunity to reconcile. But this opportunity may already be lost.
How many of the land claimants actually want to, or would be able to, farm is now another question entirely. Those, like the Solomons, who are waiting for deeds are reluctant to talk about their intentions for the land. Those that have their deeds are waiting for zoning. But many have given up. Others have simply died.
Ellen Deane, a claimant who grew up on Paddasvlei, says, “It’s too much energy to want to live there. I would have opted for low cost housing, but now I’ll wait for my deed and the grace period and I’ll probably sell. Constantia will never be what it was when I was growing up.
“Everything we had, we grew. And in winter when we didn’t have, we sold the arums. My father used to pull the bulbs out of the fields and plant them there in the ditches on the side of the road, so that they would grow, so we would have them to sell. And now we are told they can’t be picked.”
“If heaven is comparable to the life we had then, then I would tell you to do your utmost to get to heaven.” says Frank Marco, of the Constantia Valley Land Claims Beneficiaries Trust. Marco now lives in Lotus River, in a small house with a dry garden. His wife seems reluctant to let us speak to him. He explains “she was there as well, after we married. Talking about this stirs up a lot of memories.” He grew up in Paddasvlei where his family had farmed for four generations. “We didn’t have electricity or running water, I used to have to keep the vlei clean for our drinking water.” They grew fruit and vegetables for their own consumption and to sell. They lived off the land and sold the excess crops. When they were forcibly removed in 1964 he says, “we could take our belongings with us but we couldn’t take the trees.”
“The bean price shot up a few years later.” He says quietly. “If I had stayed on that land, I would have been a millionaire.”
In 1998 Marco was told he would get his land back. “I rejoiced. Now these are just memories of battles lost. We were told that if the land were undeveloped it would be granted to us. But that land is still undeveloped.”
I ask Marco if he has passed any of his farming knowledge onto his children.
“My father’s grandfather had that land, from the early 1800s we lived there. That knowledge was passed down. But my kids, what can I teach them? How to grow flowers in a garden? The flowers here dry up.”
The Land Restitution Act relies on the principle of willing seller; including government departments. Marco’s land is now privately owned, and has been for years. DA Councillor Denis Joseph says, “the owner of that land doesn’t have to sell, it’s unlikely that anyone will get Paddasvlei back. But…” he insists, “people are getting land!”
Joseph, lays the blame for the slow rate of land restitution on the Land Claims Commission “The national policy is to pay out rather than to get people back onto their land. It’s not a right policy, It’s not a moral policy.” But he’s at pains to point out that it’s not a race issue. “Even white people who have claims in Philippi are still waiting. It’s everyone. The Apartheid government took land away from everyone. They did what they wanted. And now this government is doing the same.”
From December to early January, I tried to get hold of Patrick Thembani, the project manager handling many of these claims, I was met with an out of order cell number and a landline that was either constantly busy or never answered. Regional Commissioner Beverly Jansen did not return my emails.
“I’m not surprised.” Says Joseph. “It’s impossible to get hold of those people. They simply do not want to help. They really don’t want to give people land. And more than that there are old people, who have waited a long time, with claims in Tokai whose land is worth a million rand and now they have accepted as little as 90 thousand, because they have been made to feel it is their only option.”
Whether it is merely bureaucratic bungling or a kind of go slow pressure tactic to get land claimants to settle for less; the end result is the same. This is not a reconciliatory process. The slow rate of land reform, the government stonewalling, the saga of the fake endangered frog and the fact that selling lilies is illegal, all add up to a simple truth: The land claimants do not feel welcome in Constantia.
When I finally get hold of Thembani he tells me “I don’t think justice is being done. Restitution is by its nature political and therefore it’s handled at the level of politicians and that works slowly.” He says that the former ANC MEC for Transport and Public works Marius Fransman sent the LCC a letter on the 8th July 2008 stating that the land was available and ready to be handed over, “but to this date, nothing tangible has resulted.” He also points out that due to the change over to the DA, the bureaucratic process has been futher delayed.
“There is a lot of vacant land in Constantia.” Says Thembani, “and it’s owned by state departments. When we ask them for that land we never get answers. At least those departments can tell us what that land is earmarked for. But we don’t know. And because we don’t know people get bitter.”
“Thembani can blame who he likes.” Says Liz Brunette. “The fact of the matter is that the ball is in their court.” It’s a frustrating and tangled web with a lot of cross blaming. And while time continues to pass, the remaining claimants merely get older.
On the one hand the residents of Constantia truly want the land claimants to have their land but their approach is informed by an entrenched suspicion of the lower classes, combined with a late capitalist fatalism. On the other, the land claimants, already poor and dispossessed, are faced with a large and indifferent bureaucratic machine that disregards the value of time. Irretrievable time. A large opportunity is slipping away.
“The others, some have taken money, some have taken those houses but I just want my farm.” Says Frank Marco. “But I’m old now I won’t be able to farm. I’d have to clean out the vlei and make the rivers flow again. I must just forget.” But he has not forgotten. He knows the land can still be made to bear fruit.
Archive note: Transcribed from the supplied photographs of the print pages. Original wording and print spellings retained; page and column breaks removed. Photographs are not reproduced here. The portrait on p. 25 is captioned “Moses Jaftha.”