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Hope in despair: Expropriated for political expediency   

My family’s fading cries for ancestral land 

 

Lebogang Seale  

Student Number: 683004 

 

 

A thesis submitted to the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Faculty of 

Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in the fulfilment of the requirements for the 

degree of Master of Arts.  

 

Johannesburg, 2021.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Table of Contents  

 

Part A: Long form non-fiction narrative  

 

1. Abstract………………………………………………………………........................................................................3 

2. Declaration……………………………………………………………......................................................................4  

3. Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………………………….5  

4. Caught up in the land claim storm.…………………...…………………………..........................................6  

5. A Haunting Cry for Ancestral Land ………………….………………………………………………………14 

6. The long-winded road to reclaiming our birthright...………………………....................................19 

7. Diasporic Landowners.…………………………………………......................................................................30 

8. A coalesce of restless ancestral spirits ..................…………...........….........................................39 

9.  The elusive quest to reclaim our ancestral land…………………………….......................................48  

10. Cry Me a River ………………………………………...........................................................................................56 

11. The Hostile ‘Homecoming’.…………………………………….......................................................................64 

12. Welcome to the Agrarian Republic ....…...……………………………….........…………………………….73 

13. When land reform stokes existential fear………………………………………………………………….79 

14. Trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty ………………….......................................................................84 

15. Final reflections: From the Valley of Hope to the Mountain Peaks of Despair.……....……...89 

Part B: Methodology   

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………….………...............................................93 

2. Historical background…………………………………………………………..................................................97 

3. Rationale……………………………………………………………………………..................................................100 

4. Narrative aim………………………………………………………………………………………………………….102 

5. Personal interest/motivation.………………………………………………................................................103 

6. Narrative approach………………………………………………………….………...........................................104 

7. Literature review…………………………………………………………….…….….……………………….........106  

8. Methodology.………………………………………………………………………….….........................................114 

9. Challenges……………………………………………………….………………………...........................................116 

10. Ethical considerations……………………………………………………….…………………………………….118 

11. Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...................................................120 

12. Appendices …………………………………………………………………………….……………………………....124 

 



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Abstract  

The signing into law of the South African constitution in 1996 was widely expected to 

provide redress for communities that suffered land dispossession during white colonial 

rule, among other imperatives. The Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, and especially 

Section 25 of the constitution, specifically affirmed an individual’s right to land restitution.  

As such, there were great expectations that the Natives Land Act of 1913 and other 

subsequent legislations on land dispossession would be reversed. As is well documented, 

land reform in South Africa has been painfully slow and complex. A distinguishing feature 

of this longform narrative article is that it is told through the voices of a family and 

community members who share their darkest moments of living and working on white 

people’s farms and their struggle to reclaim their land. The research established that not 

only is the ideal of land reform in South Africa a monumental failure and disappointment, 

but that it is a veritable betrayal that can be damaging on affected people whose quest for 

restorative justice remains elusive. It shows our community’s struggle in reclaiming their 

ancestral land. After almost a quarter of a century since we lodged our land claim, we have 

nothing to show for it.  This is also a family story about the travails of lifting ourselves out 

of the morass of poverty and deprivation, wrought by land dispossession and forced 

removals. Interviews with white farmers whose properties are under the land claims show 

that land reform can be a polarising issue that threatens national unity, if not dealt with 

prudently, expeditiously and judiciously. This research project consists of two parts, a 

longform narrative and a scholarly piece that underpins it.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Acknowledgements  

Working on this narrative project was a long and arduous task; something that I would not 

have achieved without the generous and constructive critique of my supervisors, Kevin 

Davie and Lesley Cowling. They were both excellent supervisors who assisted and guided 

me with the framing of this story and the narrative style. Many thanks to all the MA class of 

2019/20 for their reviews and inputs. I am also indebted to my friends Kevin Ritchie and 

Samuel Letsie for their invaluable contribution in the crafting of this project.   

I also want to express my profound gratitude to my parents, Motlhatlego Wellington Seale 

and Puledi Mamodjadji Seale, as well as my relatives and elders in our community who 

availed themselves for interviews. This research project would not have been possible 

without their insightful knowledge of our family’s life history. Many thanks to the 

commercial farmers, Eugene ‘Jupie’ Pohl, Mauritz Jean ‘Tickie’ Pohl, the late George Short 

and Tommie van Zyl of ZZ2 for agreeing to be interviewed. Their views offered an 

interesting perspective about South Africa’s land reform debacle.  

My siblings Teddy and Nancy were helpful in pointing out to certain leads in the family 

history. Special thanks to my wife Mpho who was supportive and patient throughout my 

years of study and when I travelled far away from home searching for information and 

materials relevant to this project. Lastly, I dedicate this work to my children, Kholofelo, 

Kgomotšo, Tumelo and Kopano. I hope that it will inspire them to understand that with 

hard work and perseverance, nothing is unattainable.   

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Caught up in the land claim storm 

The scorching sun returned with a vengeance, drying up the rare raindrops of the early 

afternoon. Here and there, far and near, a few residents huddled under tree branches 

hanging low over rickety fences. A lone goat or two rummaged through threadbare patches 

of grass on the edge of the streets. Barring these, the streets were deserted, and an ominous 

silence descended over Mohlabaneng village on the outskirts of Modjadjiskloof (formerly 

Duiwelskloof) in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The sun stood still, watching every 

movement.  

It was a Saturday afternoon in November 2015, when the days are longer and hotter. You 

feel that it cannot get worse than here, but the sweltering heatwave gets harsher as you 

trek to the farthest north in the lower escarpment. As I approached the street leading to my 

parents’ home, a whirlwind started swirling ferociously, lashing houses with thick dust and 

all manner of fragments. For a moment, it stopped right in my parents’ yard and danced 

around. Then it moved away with aggressive force.  

The dust had scarcely settled when my father, Motlhatlego Wellington Seale, came out of 

the house and sat under a tree. He cast a forlorn figure and was in a contemplative mood. 

“Your mother hasn’t been seen since this morning. I’ve been asking around and no one can 

say with any certainty where she is,” he muttered, rubbing his scalp that gleamed under the 

African sun.  

 

                   Figure 1. Motlhatlego Wellington Seale  
                            (Photo: The Author) 



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Anxiety still etched into every line of his eyes; father ushered me to the living room. We had 

just settled down when the roaring sound of cars filled the air. And then the silence 

returned, followed by a soft thud of doors closing. It was my brother Teddy Seale and sister 

Nancy Seale (both younger to me), alighting from their cars. Teddy, Nancy and I seldom 

take the 450km jaunt from Gauteng to our home village, unless for special occasions or 

during the festive seasons.  

Mohlabaneng is a sprawling village in Bolobedu, a tribe that forms part of the Bapedi, or 

Northern Sotho speaking people in Limpopo Province. (Mohlabaneng is marked B on the 

map below. Also, see appendix 8 on page 130). Until the advent of democracy in 1994, the 

province consisted of three homelands: Lebowa (for the Pedi people), Gazankulu 

(Shangaan) and Venda (people). These were rural reserves designated by apartheid’s 

architects, which they called bantustans.  

 

Figure 2. Villages in Bolobedu, Limpopo Province, where the Seale community scattered after they 
were forced off their land (yellow part marked I (Source: Maphill)  

 



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Whenever Teddy, Nancy and I travel to that part of the country, there is a yearning to see 

our father and mother, Puledi Mmamodjadji Seale. Mother was nicknamed Mabela, which 

literally means the one who is boiling. True to her name, she was irascible, and could fly at 

anyone at the slightest provocation. Yet, her benevolence and friendliness were all too 

apparent.  

We had hardly shared pleasantries when we heard a clinking sound. It was the gate 

opening. “There she is!” father said, peering through the window. A palpable feeling of 

relief swept across the room. Looking regal in her black garment, her hands calmly clasped 

together behind her back, mother sauntered into the yard. As she walked into the 

passageway, I leaned forward on the couch in anticipation. She glanced around the room, 

her eyes first resting on Nancy at the far corner, then Teddy and finally me. She then 

proceeded to walk into her bedroom. Quietly.  

“Whose funeral was it?” Nancy asked, after a while. Father shrugged his shoulders and 

raised his hands. Moments later, mother emerged clutching a glossy piece of paper 

inscribed with a photograph of a stout white man grinning.  

 

Figure 3. ‘Kaspaas’ Pohl.    
(Photo: Family Facebook page)  

 

Below the image was a message in bold letters:  

“Montague Marinus (Kaspaas) Pohl”  

Birthdate: August 27, 1956  

Death: October 31, 2015 (59),  

Farm Klipdrift, Mooketsi, Mopani, Limpopo, South Africa (Heart attack) 

Place of Burial: Mooketsi, Mopani.” 



9 
 

Father shook his head, then tapped me on the shoulder. “Oh, Kaspaas (the Afrikaner 

farmer’s nickname),” he said, a wry smile spreading across his face.  

“So, now that he has followed his father to the grave, you think you can have all their land,” 

mother charged. A brief silence engulfed the room. We were stunned into silence. My 

father, my brother, my sister and I.  

Once again, our family was caught up in the tensions over the land claim issue. Like me, my 

father and siblings could not understand why mother would mourn the death of an 

oppressor and one of the sons of the colonial masters who were among the earliest persons 

to occupy our communal land and force us out of it through a draconian labour tenancy 

system.  

Kaspaas was the son of the late Mauritz Eugene Pohl (commonly known as Jambren), the 

man who, until his death in 1996, owned the three farms located on our ancestral land near 

Modjadjiskloof, a ‘dorpie’ tucked away about 120km from Polokwane, in the Letaba-

Mooketsi valley. Later in the 1980s, Kaspaas acquired a farm of his own, known as Montina, 

on the land not far from his father’s three farms. Both my mother and father went on to 

work at Montina, among the many other farms they toiled on after they were forced off 

their land.  

In 2012, the government fined Kaspaas R28 million for failing to comply with the newly 

promulgated labour regulations. He was not paying the minimum wage, was enforcing 

illegal salary deductions, and not paying workers for their annual leave days.  

At the time Kaspaas died in 2015, it was a decade since the Regional Land Claims 

Commission (RLCC) office in Polokwane (formerly Pietersburg) wrote to the community 

endorsing our land claim as “valid” and that we had “a prima facie case” (see appendix 4 on 

page 126) to reclaim our birthright. The Seale Tribal Trust Land Claim was among the first 

land claims to be lodged in South Africa in December 1998.  By the end of the year 2021 – 

almost a quarter of a century – the community was still waiting.  

The longer it took to resolve the land claim, as the government fiddled, the more tensions 

festered in the community. Suspicions have crept in among some who think that the land 



10 
 

claim committee leaders have connived with the farm owners and/or the land claims 

commission officials to enrich themselves out of the land. Some believe that the 

committee’s stance on wanting the land returned as the only acceptable restitution – 

instead of financial compensation – is the cause of the delays in our land claim being 

resolved. These conflicting views on the type of restitution are threatening to tear families 

and the community apart.  

Not everyone in the community understands that owning the land is a way to preserve it 

for generations to come and a meaningful way to pay homage to the ancestors. In the midst 

of such divergent opinions, some, like me, found resonance in the views of the foremost 

African authors such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. For instance, he once wrote in Weep Not, Child, 

that “any man who had land was considered rich. If a man had plenty of money, many 

motor cars, but no land, he could never be counted as rich. A man who went with tattered 

clothes but had at least an acre of red earth, was better off than the man with money.”  

J.B Danquah (1928), a Ghanaian lawyer and political activist during that nation's 

independence movement, puts this as follows: “An absolute sale of land ... was therefore not 

simply a question of alienating reality; notoriously it was a case of selling a spiritual 

heritage for a mess of portage, a veritable betrayal of an ancestral trust, an undoing of the 

hope of posterity.”  

For many of our community members, however, the lure of money seemed so irresistible 

that it far outweighs any other consideration. It reality, it is all out of sheer desperation, 

because of the destitution that many find themselves in. For them, the land claim is a once-

in-a-lifetime opportunity for a cash bonanza, and any contrary view borders on a betrayal.  

The more the delays before our land claim is resolved, the more those advocating for 

financial compensation find their voices. As Ruth Hall (2004), a professor at the Institute 

for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), at the University of the Western Cape, puts 

it in her research paper, Land reform and agrarian change in South Africa: A status report 

2004, “delays in the process of restoration – and the offer of ready cash to cash-strapped 

communities – can be a powerful incentive for claimants to opt for financial settlement”.  



11 
 

Mother, meanwhile, was not the one to shy away from expressing her views about these 

matters regarding our land claim, unorthodox as they were. Not only was she resolute in 

her stance for financial compensation, but she was also vocal in questioning our 

competence in farming. “Why don’t you just claim all the money and leave the Boers alone 

on the land? What will you do with the land? What do you know about farming?” she would 

ask.  

Yet, as far as she was concerned, the issue was beyond financial considerations. Her 

affectionate loyalty to the Afrikaner farmers was something to behold, at least from a 

master-servant point of view. For her, Kaspaas, his younger brother Mauritz Jean ‘Tickie’ 

Pohl and their father Jambren seemed like messengers sent to our land by a venerated 

spirit. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Figure 4: Mauritz Jean ‘Tickie’ Pohl (Kaspaas’s  

younger brother) with Puledi Mamodjadji Seale  
         (Photo: The Author) 

The way she went about praising them, you would swear they were nothing short of the 

otherworldly beings. “If I had things my way, and could turn back the clock, I would mount 

wheels on this house and go back to the farm and live with them,” she would say, at the 

slightest mishap at the village. Kaspaas’s death – which came almost a decade after his 

father’s demise – was a blow to her heart. Her grief was stark.  



12 
 

She was indefatigable in her defence of Jambren and his sons, so much so that her 

commiserations for them caused exasperation in our family. It often drove father to the 

edge. “Did you really have to hitch-hike that far to the farms to attend that funeral? Was it 

that necessary? How special was he?” father asked, his general lack of tact showing.  

Mother flew at him, in a feat of rage. “I am not like you, who went about hopping from one 

farmer to another and retired with nothing to show! Who are you to decide whether I 

should attend their funerals? Makgowa a le kea gešo (those are our white people.)”  

Teddy burst out in laughter, guffawing until his eyes were wet with tears. Mother turned to 

face him, then me and Nancy. “As for the three of you, you better shut up! You wouldn’t be 

what you are today if it wasn’t because of Jambren and his children. It was their money that 

gave you the education and all the things you have today.” At that point, my other younger 

brother, Meshack, whom the Boers had named Siebert, walked in. “And you, too!” mother 

said, pointing at him. Meshack was left flummoxed at the unprovoked jibe.  

My mother’s overweening habit to remind everyone about what she saw as our family’s 

indebtedness to the Afrikaner farmers was enough to test my father’s patience. His brow 

furrowed and he rubbed his scalp rapidly. “What money? Getting paid peanuts once after 

many months? When, after payment, we were not left with any cash for our preferences?” 

he retorted.  

He was referring to the payment-in-kind system at the time. Farm dwellers were paid 

paltry wages once every six months, or even a year in some instances. On paydays, which 

was usually on Saturdays, they were transported in open trucks to a shop near Mooketsi, 

which was owned by an Indian man. They were each given a piece of paper to present to 

the shopkeeper, in exchange for whatever goods they needed.  Father had again touched 

my mother’s sensitive nerve.  “When you say your personal preferences, you mean cartons? 

(Sorghum beer in packets)?”  

Until that point, I had maintained an uneasy calm, restraining myself. This time, I snapped: 

“For goodness’ sake, we were their slaves ma. The Boers. Our sweat, our blood, our tears; 

that’s what all those farms are built on, the properties on our ancestral land. But here you 



13 
 

are mother, defending them yet again. What’s wrong with you? Look at you, you are so 

fragile and sickly because of them.”  

A deafening silence engulfed the room.  For a little while, there was no word, no whimper – 

just silence. Mother’s lips quivered. As usual, her propensity to be offended by any views 

that she deemed denigrating of Jambren and his sons was apparent. Yet, as usual, she was 

not the one to be easily cowed into submission. Gazing at father with a sharp, penetrating 

look, she said: “Jambren never robbed anyone. This one (wagging her finger at father) and 

Monyebere would, sometimes during the middle of the month, go and claim their wages 

before (the) six-month (cycle). Then they would go on a drinking spree on weekends. They 

were tsotsis these ones.”   

The man she was referring to was Monyebere Mamorobela, who, for many years, worked 

closely with my father as a tractor operator. At great length, mother explained how the 

payment system worked. Unless you were familiar with her, you would not discern her 

biasness towards the Afrikaner farmers. Her clarity of thought and penetrating analysis 

were remarkable.  

“We would finish six months without pay. We got our salary in the second week of July. When 

that time came, Jambren would count each one’s wages month by month, carefully checking 

the number of days you worked for. He would then say, ‘you see how many months you worked 

for’ before giving your money.”   

Although it is not clear why the farmers were imposing this payment system, it would 

appear that they were invoking the Native Service Contract Act of 1932. As Padraig 

O’Malley (1987), who wrote in the O’Malley Archives, explains it, the Act extended labour 

tenancy to all members of each household on the farm and “forced all tenants on white-

owned farms to work between three to six months per year… (and) prevented them from 

leaving the farm without permission”.   

“So, you see! They were robbing us!” father retorted. “If I were you, I wouldn’t bother going 

to their funeral.” Again, mother was stupefied with rage. “At least I left the farm with 

something to show. It was my savings that built this home,” she said, her voice raising 

https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03519/05lv03594.htm
https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03519/05lv03594.htm
https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01508/04lv01509.htm


14 
 

vindictively. The exasperation in her voice was distinct. The searing heat permeated the 

room, precipitating the perspiration on her forehead. “I don’t know why you keep 

tormenting me, and disturbing my peace,” mother said.  

Nancy tittered, then tilted her head, sending her hair flying. She heaved a deep sigh and 

sunk back on the couch. Then she turned to look at me. “What is the latest regarding this 

land claim that is dragging too long? Soon it will be two decades since it was lodged. Will 

our people ever get back their land in their lifetime? I’m sorry, but I feel that the whole 

thing is an unmitigated failure. I am certainly not alone in thinking like this.” 

I thought about the elders in our family and community who had died since the land claim 

was lodged. The surviving elders were in the twilight of their lives, clinging precariously to 

dear life. I looked at father. He had grown frail in recent years. My mother too. I shuddered. 

In my state of guilt, my mind slipped back to the time when the land claim idea started and 

our travails in reclaiming our birthright.  

A haunting cry for ancestral land   

It was a typical Sunday morning at the village. A soft breeze swept across Mohlabaneng, 

and tree branches swayed back and forth, whistling and dancing rhythmically. Time and 

again, young men with beer bottles firmly in their hands passed the street along my home, 

walking in an awkward, unsteady way. Their high-pitched voices and giggles pierced the 

air. The way they went about blabbering with authority, it was as if they ruled the world. 

Dust from a couple yards swirled up in the air. It was the sign of women sweeping their 

yards, an early Sunday morning ritual at the village.  

It was in late October 1998, while I was pruning some flowers, when a car hurtled to a stop 

next to my gate. It was my paternal uncle, Wilson Mothoka Seale, in his modest Chevrolet 

station wagon. His car was not roaring with the usual mbaqanga (a Southern African dance 

music that combines traditional and modern music) hits of Richie S (Richard Siluma)’s 

African Dance, the Soul Brothers’ Mama ka Sibongile, and so forth.  



15 
 

On this occasion, he sported a sullen and pensive face, devoid of the geniality and humour 

that he was known for. Something serious was evidently troubling him. “I see you have 

been too quiet. I’ve never heard silence quite loud as this,” he said, with biting sarcasm.  

 

       Figure 5: Wilson Mothoka Seale was  
   determined to see the ancestral land  
   returned.  (Photo: Family album)  

 

He started off in a rather philosophical fashion, asking me what I thought each time I drove 

past the sprawling farmlands that dot the Letaba-Mooketsi valley.  

“What goes through your mind when you drive between our villages and Mooketsi and 

Modjadjiskloof, seeing all the big lands there? Look at me closely, who do you think I am? I 

may have an identity document, but it doesn’t define the essence of my existence. I feel that 

there is something solely missing in me, and that without it I can’t define myself, in terms of 

culture, my sense of belonging and my self-worth.”  

 

It did not take long to understand that this was a haunting cry for the return of ancestral 

land, lost as per among others to the insidious and notorious Natives Land Act of 1913 and 

other subsequent acts. In 1996, when active involvement in party politics, especially 

membership of the African National Congress (ANC) was fashionable, I had watched as the 

then president, Nelson Mandela, signed into law the country’s constitution. It was a highly 

symbolic act that consigned apartheid to history and ushered in a new future for the 

country. Or so we thought. Among the legislations enacted in the constitution was the 



16 
 

Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994, and especially Section 25, which acknowledged the 

right to land restitution.  

There was collective optimism, especially among communities who suffered land 

dispossession, that the ills of the 1913 Natives Land Act and its surrogate legislation, the 

Natives Trust and Land Act of 1936, would be reversed.  While the Natives Land Act of 

1913 sought to restrict blacks or native South Africans from owning the land outside of the 

reserves, the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 was the defining moment for our 

community.  

As O’Malley puts it, the defining clause of the Act was the one that declared that:  

“Land subject to the chapter may not be occupied by natives except under certain 

circumstances unless, he is a servant of the owner [and] registered labour tenant… registered 

as a squatter…  A native who contravenes this provision… shall be guilty of an offence and 

may be removed from the land upon which he/she is residing.”  

The effects are also explained in the Regional Land Claims Commission’s document 

endorsing the Seale Tribal Trust Land Claim as valid.  

“The systematic downgrading and deprivation of black people of their land rights on their 

land was a practice carried out by government indirectly and backed by racial laws amongst 

which the Natives Land Act, 27, of 1913 took upper hand, the Native Trust and Land Act, 18 of 

1936 as well as the Native Service Contract Act, 1932. In this case, the Seale people were 

adversely affected by the provisions of the Natives Land Act of 1913... (the) Native Service 

Contract 1932, Act, as well as the Native Trust and Land Act, 1936.... which blatantly 

prohibited ownership of land.”  

These Acts all had one common purpose; to reduce Africans to servile labour, working for 

and at the pleasure of their colonial masters.  As Sol Plaatje put it in his iconic words, 

“Awakening on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not 

actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.”   



17 
 

It would seem that the arrival of the first white person on our land coincided with the 

promulgation of the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936, at least according to the elders in 

our community. Mrs. Dora Graham, whom our elders called Mosetsanyana (sotho word for 

a young woman), arrived at Sutwane (Sedan) in the mid-1930s and declared our land hers. 

It was effectively an arbitrary occupation that was consistent with the skewed political 

power-relations that promoted the interests of white people at the expense of black South 

Africans. 

I was among the few sons and daughters of the former farm dwellers who had received 

formal education up to university level, and I knew the laws and the history of the country 

pertaining to land dispossession and land reform. As I could work it out at that point, my 

family felt disempowered to mount any resistance to the land dispossession because the 

laws of the country favoured white people.  

However, I kept procrastinating on the idea of initiating the land claim. This was because, 

after completing my studies at university, and as the first born in my family, I was still 

preoccupied with improving the living conditions at our home and helping my siblings 

through their education.  

Now, here was Wilson, with an unusually glum disposition. He, like my parents and many 

elderly relatives and community members who came from our ancestral land, had never 

set foot at school. But you could not help noticing that some of them were endowed with a 

natural intelligence and a noble insight not apparent to everyone. Wilson was one of those, 

a living proof that a person can be intelligent without being educated and, conversely, that 

education does not necessarily make a person intelligent. He always distinguished himself 

by his sharp wit and sound judgment. Distinctly affable, he was a joy to relate and talk to. 

To borrow from research professor, historian and author, Charles van Onselen, “he was 

simultaneously a very ordinary man and an extraordinary countryman”. 

But now, Wilson was no longer at ease.  

“I hear many people are claiming their lands, yet you have been silent. No one is saying 

anything. Everyone. Are you just going to let everything pass with the wind, as if nothing 



18 
 

happened? How do you feel about living in this tiny yard? Do you know why I am struggling to 

keep even half-a-dozen cattle in my yard today, when we used to have a herd of more than 50 

cows? Do you not know why we are stuck here, in these hot, dry and barren lands?” 

I wanted to reply but his avalanche of questions pummelled me down.  

Have you ever asked yourself, since we were forced off of our land, why we keep going back to 

the white men’s farms begging for jobs, even when they pay us a pittance? How do I call 

myself a complete person when I know that I struggle every time I want to trace my lineage 

and my forebears and pay homage to them at their last resting places? I keep on telling my 

children about the ancient law of survival that “thou shall eat through the sweat of your 

brow”, but how do I preach about that when I don’t have the land?” 

His eyes wandered restlessly to the distant mountains. His voice rose and fell like a soft 

wave, and it seemed as if he was on a distant shore, wrestling with all these thoughts to 

himself.  There was an inscrutable mystery about him. I felt a sudden urge to pat him on his 

shoulder to reassure him of my presence, but I became overwhelmed with guilt.  

The fact that it had taken my uncle to jolt me out of complacency about the value of land 

haunted me. Although Wilson did not say it explicitly, his was making an impassioned plea 

for urgency about the land claim. It was a desperate plea, filled with sorrow and I felt a 

sharp lump of regret in my throat that numbed me, literally. I then remembered a scene in 

The River Between, a novel by one of the foremost African writers, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o. An 

aging father, Chege – who was worried about the breakdown of the African traditional 

society in the face of Christianity at their village in Kenya –counsels his son, Waiyaki.   

“I am old, my time is gone. Remember that you are the last in this line. Arise, heed the 

prophesy. Go to the Mission place. Learn all the wisdom and the secrets of the white man. But 

do not follow his vices. Be true to your people and the ancient rites… A man must rise and save 

the people in their hour of need. He shall show them the way; he shall lead them.”  



19 
 

I also felt as if Wilson’s voice came to me from somewhere above, in the same manner that 

the Biblical Moses was instructed to go and save the Israelites from the house of bondage in 

Egypt and lead them to the proverbial land flowing with honey and milk.  

“This would be a noble worth pursuing. There would be no more fitting a tribute to my 

parents, relatives and the community’s life of toil and sacrifices on the farms than the 

symbolic act of having the ancestral land returned to them, for the sake of future 

generations,” I thought to myself.  

I immediately sprung to action, rallying other relatives around this cause. Meanwhile, the 

deadline of December 31 loomed large. There was no time to waste. 

The long-winded road to reclaiming our birthright 

“I am impressed that we are all formal in our jackets. We must all look the part, like the true 

members of a royal family that we were at our ancestral land before it was taken away 

from us. And remember that ‘there are no shortcuts to the top of the palm tree.’”  

With these remarks about the Western codified dress decorum and the importance of 

perseverance, Wilson led us to his car. This was as we set off on the 120km-odd trip to 

Pietersburg (now renamed Polokwane), the provincial capital city of the present-day 

Limpopo Province. There was only one objective: to get our land claim recorded in the 

register of the Regional Land Claims Commission (RLCC) before the cut-off date (31 

December 1998).  

The hastily assembled delegation consisted of a triumvirate of the sons of Ramphaka 

William Seale, our late patriarch who had been the chief on our ancestral land before 

dispossession. There was Wilson, his elder brother, Isaac Mohale Seale, his younger brother 

Godfrey Seale, and me.  We knew that because we had been racing against time, we had not 

been able to assemble an inclusive committee that was representative of the entire 

community, instead of it looking like an all family affair. We were also alert to the fact that 

due to limited time, we might not have gathered all the substantial information to put 



20 
 

forward a watertight case.  At the time, the immediate and pressing consideration was not 

to miss the crucial deadline of 31 December 1998 to get our land claim registered.   

A nervous excitement was palpable as we embarked on the long jaunt on a misty Monday 

morning.  As we passed Ga-Maphalle village (See pages 7 and appendix 8 on 130) and 

approached Musukudutsi River, the colour of the tarred road suddenly changed from black 

to golden red. Not so long ago, there used to be a board inscribed with the letters TPA 

(Transvaal Provincial Administration). Whether it was by design or accident, it was always 

a stark reminder that we were entering the non-black area.  

 

Figure 6. Mosukudutsi River (Brandboontjiesrivier) along the R81 Road.  It formed the border 

between white commercial farms and Bolobedu in the former Lebowa bantustan.  

(Photo: The author) 

 

Across the river is a vast expense of verdant tracts of land on both sides of the road, 

stretching into the long distance, as far as the eye could see. “Do you see that big tree on 

our right?” asked Isaac, as soon as we crossed the river. “Wellington (the author’s father) 

used to have lunch and rest there when he was ploughing the fields. It was him, Jambren, 

and Monyebere. Sometimes they would work until late in the evening and through the 

night, by the tractor lights.” 



21 
 

With that single mention of Jambren’s name, Isaac triggered what became an animated and 

lengthy conversation about the many Afrikaner farmers in the Letaba-Mooketsi valley and 

how our land was taken away. Their names were popular in the region, so much so that you 

could swear they were legends. There was Jambren’s brother Rossi (Stephanus Ross Pohl), 

and their father Thununu (Stephan Montaque Pohl), as well as Fresie (Freez de Beer) and 

Jako (a Mr. Duvenage). Of course, the list was not complete without the wealthier and more 

powerful ZZ2 (Bertie van Zyl), the founder of the largest fresh producing company in the 

country, if not on the African continent.  

Between the 1970s and 1990s, these farmers were feared and revered at the same time in 

the black communities. When it came to the business of farming, their names radiated 

power and awe, and it was as if they possessed mythical powers.  

“All this is Mantsho, which the Boers called Vaalwater,” said Wilson, following up on Isaac’s 

remark reminiscing about his days working as a tractor operator on the farms. “The 

portion you pointed out to, has been lying fallow for as much as I can remember. Imagine if 

we had it to ourselves, even if it was just for a year. My cows wouldn’t have died of the 

drought last year,” said Wilson. “Apparently, it’s called a no-till practice, which is part of the 

soil recovery strategy,” said Godfrey. 

The vastness of the land is an envy to villagers cramped in barren villages and passerby 

travelling through this corridor linking the former homelands of Gazankulu and Lebowa to 

Gauteng.  According to information from the farmers, the combined size of the land was 

3000 hectares. We could not independently verify this, but our estimation was that the land 

is about half the size of the entire Soweto township in Gauteng.  

About 5km further the road is a 3m high barbed wire fence. “From here, it’s Sedan. It used 

to be seat of our traditional leadership before the Boers appeared on our land and took it 

away,” said Wilson, to which Isaac responded: “Every time I pass here and see all the land, I 

am reminded of that woman called Dora (Graham), the first white person to come here and 

took away our land. She claimed that she bought it from the government.” Her name 

doesn’t sound Afrikaner, like the Boers who own the land around here.”  



22 
 

 

Figure 8. The tombstone of Mrs. Dora  
Graham in Medingen, near Modjadjiskloof.  
(Photo: eGGSA Library) 

 

Wilson interjected: “As explained earlier, Thununu (Stephan Montaque Pohl) said he 

bought it from her. They were selling each other our land, as if we didn’t exist. Now, 

Mandela, the king of all kings, has spoken.  The land must be returned.”  

His eyes wandered back and forth across the landscape, visibly enthralled by the allure of 

its vast expanse. “Once we get back the land, I will be the chief here,” he quipped. “Isaac, 

you will take Makgobole.  Wellington, you can have Vaalwater.” Unimpressed, Isaac 

interjected: “No, no, no. Wellington is the eldest of us, so he must decide which land he 

wants first. Then it will be me to choose, followed by yourself. That’s what tradition 

dictates, and you can’t go against that.”  

I had interviewed my uncles and other relatives about how the loss of land had happened 

but the more I saw the land, the more it raised my curiosity. I had always wondered, for 

instance, why Jambren’s name seemed so intertwined with our family history that it was 

literally passed from generation to generation. “Why does it seem that Jambren’s name is 

so omnipresent in our community history, so much so that he is on everyone’s lips. Why is 

he so synonymous with our birthplace?”  

Wilson turned around to look at me. “It is because he was the longest white person we 

knew and worked under, on the land. Dora didn’t stay that long. Thununu was never really 

actively involved at our land. Once he bought the land from Dora, he gave it to Jambren and 



23 
 

Rossi and bought another land across the other side of the river (Koedoesrivier) and the 

big road (R81).” 

“Why does it seem that you were happy to surrender it so meekly? No resistance, 

whatsoever,” I asked.  “It’s not like that. That’s a simplicity view,” replied Wilson. “They 

were white people, and they had more power. They were the government; they ruled the 

country. They also had guns. We felt powerless. Helpless.”  

Godfrey, who had been passively listening to the conversation, asked: “So, what was Dora 

like? “Not much is known about her,” explained Isaac, “except that she was a cattle and 

horse breeder. After taking over the land, she forced our community into labour tenants. 

She was said to have been a kind but a no-nonsense ‘missus’ (Afrikaner word for female 

boss)”. 

I remembered what one of the few surviving elders in our community, Freddy Ramatsoma, 

had told me about his rude encounter with Mrs. Graham, when she first came to our land 

and claimed it as hers. Ramatsoma was born in 1929, although his date of birth was 

captured as 1930 in his identity document.  For a nonagenarian, he has a sharp memory of 

how the land was lost. He also spoke with so much authority that there was an aura of 

confidence about his recollections of events on the farm.  

 

 

Figure 9: Freddy Ramatsoma, one of the elders who fled Sedan farm during the early days of land 

dispossession. (Photos: The author)  



24 
 

 

“One day, we woke up to news that the land had been bought by a white woman,” he recalled, 

speaking from his home at Sekhiming village (marked G on the map on page 7. Also see page 

130). She was called Dora. She was Irish. The elders told us that she bought it from the 

government.”  

As with many other farm dwellers, it was the forced labour tenancy system that forced him 

to flee the land.  

“She said we were working for a place to sleep (stay). How could she expect me to leave my 

uncle (Mmabatho)’s cattle and look after hers? I refused. That’s when she chased me around 

on horseback. As I ran away, I kept hiding behind trees, so she could not catch me. I fled the 

farm and walked all the way to Makgakgapatše (village) on foot (about 50 km from the 

farm). My father and the rest of the family were also chased away as punishment (for his 

defiance). They gave him a trek pass, and our family left in 1946. Later, on the same year, I 

heard that Jambren had bought the land.”   

As I reflected on Ramatsoma’s account of the evictions, childhood memories of life at Sedan 

crowded my memory. In Summer evenings, when the stars were twinkling at varying 

frequencies, we would listen to my grandmother, Motlhago Seale (Ramphaka’s wife), 

narrating beautiful stories. Most were folktales involving wild animals.  

One of her stories, about an encounter between the hare and jackal, went as follows:  

“One day, long, long ago when the stones were still soft, there was a jackal that strayed from 

the rest of the pack and wandered into strange lands. It was attracted by the allure of lush 

valleys and plains abundant with succulent plants. As darkness fell, the jackal came to a hut in 

the deep forest, which belonged to a hare. After listening to the jackal’s plight, the hare offered 

a space on the far corner of the hut. As days went by, the jackal kept asking for more space, 

enticing the hare with promises of free food. No sooner had the two animals made 

acquaintances than the jackal outfoxed the hare and taken over the shelter.”  



25 
 

Grandma paused, knocked a small plastic snuff box against the palm of her hand. She raised 

the hand towards her mouth, then spread her tongue across the palm until there was 

nothing left. She then switched her storyline to her early days when she and other relatives 

were producing crops for subsistence living.  

“One day, on a bitterly cold and wet weather evening, a woman with a red skin arrived on 

horseback. She started setting up a camp on a portion of our land. Within days, the woman 

brought a herd of cattle and horses. One day in the morning, she came to our house on 

horseback. She pointed at some young women among us and commanded us come to work at 

her house as ‘kitchen girls’. Later, more people with pale skins arrived. Then the woman left. 

The newcomers started cultivating the land and instructing us to work for them. They 

promised to pay us in shillings and pounds.” 

Grandma’s description of the whites reminded me of a passage from the novel, Devil on the 

Cross, by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. In it, he tells how some of the African indigenous people, who, 

during a community meeting, were discussing the sudden appearance of white men on 

their land.  

“As she stared at them, Waringa noted that their skins were indeed red, like that of pigs or like 

the skin of a black person who has been scalded with boiling water or who has burned himself 

with acid creams. Even the hair in their arms and necks stood out stiff and straight like the 

bristle of an aging hog. The hair on their heads was brownish, the color of moleskin. It was 

long, it fell to their shoulders as if it had never been shaved or cut out since birth.” 

In part, grandmother’s folktale was consistent with what the elders in the community had 

told me about the Pohls. They had, upon taking over the land, imposed the same labour 

tenancy system as Mrs. Graham had done, extracting whatever labour they could from the 

farm dwellers. The exploitation was often accompanied by brutality.  

As we passed Makgobole, the conversation shifted to Kaspaas’s iron-fisted reign on the 

farm in the late 1960s and then through the 1970s. In no time, he had gained notoriety for 

assaulting farmworkers at a whim. I recalled how mother narrated one of the many 

incidents, after several labourers did not go to work on one Saturday.  



26 
 

“Kaspaas found out that we didn’t report for work. He got very upset that he instructed all of 

us to queue and whipped us with sticks. It was a long queue. He did not care whether you were 

pregnant or not, he whipped everybody. I went to him, lay down and told him to beat me at 

once and finish. Mantshadi Mamorobela (one of the women) protested that she had been 

away on the Saturday to attend the funeral of her grandchild. Kaspaas would have none of it.” 

Kaspaas was joined in this alleged brutality by his uncle, Rossi, who owned a farm adjacent 

to Vaalwater. As the stories went, if he caught anyone harvesting termites, he poured the 

creatures in the transgressor’s body, or forced the person to eat them raw. Tales of his 

cruelty also included claims that he once killed one of the black labourers on his farm and 

stuffed his body in a hole.  

It is also alleged that he ended up being haunted by the spirits of his victims, so much so 

that he ended up consulting a well-known sangoma in one of the neighbouring village. This 

was as he sought to exorcise himself of the “demonic” spells haunting him.   

As for the farm dwellers, trying to free themselves from the proverbial house of bondage 

was not easy. In terms of the laws at the time, no black persons living on the farm could 

leave unless they had their dompases (an internal apartheid identity document literally 

nicknamed the ‘dumb pass’) first stamped by the employer. The dompases had to be 

carried by black people everywhere they went. If an employer were unhappy with a 

worker, he could refuse to endorse the book, jeopardising the person’s right to be in a 

different area.  

For many, there was only one option. Escape. Those, like my mother, who dared approach 

Jambren to stamp their identity books, had their requests refused out of hand. Losing their 

source of labour was the last thing in the mind of the farmers. But the situation had become 

untenable for the farm dwellers. The ground was fast shifting under their feet and death 

lurked in the air. The way my mother, my uncles and other elders in our family described it, 

the period between the late 1970 and 1980 was nothing short of an apocalypse in the 

history of the farm.  Fear and loathing stalked every corner of the farm, and residents left 

en masse. Many found refuge in the barren villages of Bolobedu, while others moved further 

north in Gazankulu.  



27 
 

Meanwhile, for all this period my uncles narrated their past experiences and encounters 

with the colonial masters, we had whizzed past the Jachpadt junction, which borders 

Makgobole (Morgenrood) from other farms that were not part of our land.    

 

Figure 7: Jachpadt junction along the R81 road from Giyani to Mooketsi,  
in Limpopo Province (Photo: The author)   

Soon, we came across ZZ2’s bright yellow branded trucks – the sign that we had now 

entered the firm’s territory. The land is so huge that it is more than double the total size of 

the commercial farms that dotted the Letaba-Mooketsi valley. Until the late 1990s, the 

trucks were among the many lorries that were so ubiquitous in many villages of Bolobedu 

and the neighbouring Sekgosese subdistrict, as well as parts of the Gazankulu and Venda 

bantustans. The trucks traversed villages transporting farmworkers to and from their 

respective workplaces. I would later meet ZZ2 CEO Tommy van Zyl for an interview on the 

land reform issues. 

Staking a claim to our ancestral land  

Suddenly, a few high-rise buildings appeared ahead of us. We had arrived in Polokwane. I 

fumbled in my bag for a file containing affidavits that Wilson and Isaac had deposed at the 

Modjadjiskloof police station. Anxiety heightened as we navigated through the maze of 

traffic, towards the land claim offices in 96 Schoeman Street in downtown Polokwane.  

Soon we had reached our destination. The door swung opened, revealing a modest open 

office space with few desk counters and piles of files.  A woman behind the reception desk 



28 
 

directed us to the next desk, where one of the commissioners explained the land claim 

registration process. After explaining the purpose of our visit, Wilson and Isaac handed in 

the affidavits that they had deposed at the Modjadjiskloof police station. 

In brief, they had in their affidavits explained that their grandfather, Mmabatho Seale, had 

been the Induna on the land where Jambren’s three farms are located, until his death in the 

early 1920s. In keeping with the leadership lineage, the Modjadji Royal Council appointed 

Ramphaka (born in 1902) as Mmabatho’s successor.  Their recollection of the events 

moved to the dispossession of the land by Mrs. Dora Graham and its acquisition by 

Jambren. The rest of the evidence was on the land tenancy which effectively forced them off 

their ancestral land in the 1970s.  

That information set in motion what was to be an hour-long questioning by the land claims 

commissioner. The cross-examination was about our family history, our occupation of the 

land and its precise location, size as well as the year of dispossession and the forced 

removals. The lack of archival material had meant that our elders could not immediately 

provide historical data that was vital to strengthen our land claim case. The difficulty was 

that most, if not all our elders in the family and community, could not read and write.  

As Michele Hay (2016), an independent researcher and honorary fellow at the Centre for 

African Studies, Edinburgh University, aptly puts it in her research thesis titled South 

Africa’s Land Reform in Historical perspective: Land settlement and agriculture in Mopani 

District, Limpopo, 19th century to 2015, “when land restitution was announced in the 1990s, 

illiteracy in rural areas was very high, especially amongst the older population and many 

households were poverty stricken and isolated.” 

She further states that “… by 31 December 1998, the cut-off date for lodging a land claim, 

many people may not have had independent access to information regarding land 

restitution, because of the context of poverty in which they lived.”  

I had done some research into our family history. I was intrigued at the information that 

showed that the Seale clan were part of the Balobedu tribe that settled around the area of 

the present-day Modjadjiskloof about 400 years ago, after migrating south from present-



29 
 

day Zimbabwe. The clan then moved on the three portions of land in the 1830s, and 

organised themselves as a community, in accordance with ancient customs and traditions.  

After an hour, we were then handed a letter that served as proof that we had lodged our 

land claim. As a parting short, the man told us that a visitation was to be done, as part of the 

verification process.  Excitement welled up in us as we exited the office building.   

“So, what shall we do with the land once we get it back?” asked Godfrey. “We will lease it to 

those farmers currently occupying it or whoever the experienced farmer wants to use it,” I 

said. “As part of the deal, they should teach us the intricacies of commercial farming, 

because farming has changed a lot over the years, and they now use sophisticated, modern 

agricultural methods. We can also venture into partnerships with them to ensure that there 

is a transfer of skills. Once we are satisfied that we have people who are competent in 

farming, we can take over the land in phases. Gradually.”  

About a few metres after we took a detour into the Mooketsi-Giyani R81 Road to the village, 

a black cat appeared and raced across the road right in front of us. “Damn, this is a sign of 

bad luck,” said Wilson. “Let’s turn back and use the other road.” After some protestation by 

me, Wilson proceeded on the same road, although grudgingly. 

Later, as I reflected on the land claim and our experiences at the land claims office, I 

realised that we needed to do a further digging to pierce together more relevant 

information to strengthen our case. With archival material scant, because most of our 

community members could not read or write, oral interviews with the elders was the 

viable source information.  

We also needed to refocus our strategy and strengthen the land claim committee to be 

inclusive of the community. Robert Mokgola, a qualified lawyer and a university graduate 

whose parents were among the last to leave the farms, was roped in to lead our case.  We 

also got two more elders to depose affidavits. Their account of the events on the farm 

leading up to the dispossession corroborated that of Wilson and Isaac. With that, the task of 

tracing more relatives and community members in the diaspora all over the villages of 

Bolobedu and other areas began in earnest.  



30 
 

Diasporic landowners    

In the far northern parts of Limpopo province, along the R81 road between Mooketsi and 

Giyani, lie two villages that stand facing each other, literally and figuratively. On the 

northern side, towards Giyani in the former Gazankulu bantustan, is N’wamankena, 

populated by the Shangaan people. To the south is Makgakgapatše, occupied by the 

Balobedu in the former Lebowa bantustan (See pages 7 and 130).  

Until the advent of democracy in 1994, there was a barbed wire fencing off the two villages 

from each other. It served as the borderline between Gazankulu and Lebowa. Since the late 

1990s, the fence had been gradually falling apart and the two villages edging closer to each 

other, as if yearning to embrace. But each time they seemed on edge of merging, a 

mysterious, seismic force appeared and repelled them.   

Local folklore legend has it that once upon a time, there existed a multi-coloured, pungent 

smelling locust in the area. It hopped around the gulf between the two villages, stranded  

 

     Figure 10: The multicoloured grasshopper.  
     (Photo: https://www.sabisabi.com/) 

 

because it was scorned by both sides of the ethnic divide. The Shangaans branded it 

Njiyavesha (a derogatory and offensive Shangaan word to describe what they say is a Sotho 

locust), while the Balobedu dubbed it Tšiethoka (similarly, a derogatory word for ‘Shangaan 

locust’). Despised, rejected and dejected, the locust flew away to distant lands. That was not 

until it left a curse so serious that it would take both communities to exorcise the tribal 

demons in them to break the insidious spell.  

https://www.sabisabi.com/


31 
 

It is in this bleak realm, at Makgakgapatše village, that my grandmother Mokgadi Ramodisa 

and other relatives found refuge after they were forced off our ancestral land. Koko 

(granny) Mokgadi is one of the few surviving elders in our family. It was on a drizzling 

Spring morning of 2019 when I set off to Makgakgapatše. I found Koko Mokgadi sitting 

against a wall, mumbling to herself, as if in a soliloquy of some sort. “Who is it? What does 

he want?” she asked, upon hearing my voice as I exchanged greetings with her 

grandchildren. She looked a bit restless and irritable at the ‘intruder’.  

“Oh, is it Motlhatlego’s son?” she said, turning around to face me. “You’ve grown into a big 

man now. You were not born when I left the farm,” she added, as if she were reading my 

mind about the purpose of my visit. She struggles with her hearing and eyesight, so I moved 

closer to her.  “So, why did you leave?” I asked, trying to seize the moment and get the most 

out of her oral testimony. 

 

Figure 11: Mokgadi Ramosibudi (Seale) recalls how she fled from  
Sedan because of the labour tenancy system (Photos: The author)  

“Eh…tjo nna nna weeh (Khelobedu expression of surprise). As if you could have stayed 

yourself. Haven’t your father and mother told you? Would you have worked only for food 

and a place to sleep?”  

I asked her about the white person to come to our land. She started narrating the list of our 

family tree lineage before and after Mrs. Graham’s arrival on our land. “Don’t you know 

your ancestors?” she asked, as she slowly recounted the family tree lineage.   



32 
 

Before I could remind her about my initial question, she said: “We were staying peacefully 

until one day, when Dora (Graham) came and said, ‘this is my land. If you want to stay here, 

you should work for me’. I was among the girls who were ordered to work in the kitchen. I 

ran away because she didn’t want to pay us.”   

Upon fleeing, koko Mokgadi first lived with relatives at Dingamazi village in Gazankulu. (See 

pages 7 and 130). Asked why Mrs. Graham did not pay her, she said: “She said we were 

working for staying on the farm, so what could we have done? Do you think we knew 

anything?” 

She then narrated, in a rather long and winding manner, how she later heard that Mrs. 

Graham had left Sedan. Although she was not there, she spoke with the authority of an 

eyewitness. “Thununu later came and chased Dora away (from the land). He took away the 

land to give to his children Jambren and Rossie.”  

Clearly, she had no idea that Jambren ‘bought’ the land”, I thought to myself. I was, 

however, impressed by her sharp memory of the sequence of events around the land 

history. Only that she could not remember the year she fled the farm.  

 

         Figure 12: Mokgadi Ramodisa,  
 (Photo: The author) 

She paused speaking, then started using her fingers to count. Her eyes shut briefly. Still, she 

could not figure out when it was. Ultimately, she said: “It was the year of the big rains, when 

Mosukudutsi burst its banks that it almost flooded our houses. When I left, I didn't know 

how old I was. But my father (Mmabatho Seale) was still there.” 



33 
 

On whether she would like to have the land back, she said: “Polase (the farm) won’t do 

anything for you, talk about ‘mašupi’ (ancestral home or the small piece of land where our 

homestead was built, surrounded by mielie fields and not the entire land in this context). 

What will you do with the farm? Mašupi is better because they will give you money.”  This 

is the same view as that of my mother, who was unwavering about her desire to return to 

our ancestral land without disturbing the farmers.  

Across the street, stays another of my other uncle, Frederick Sontaga Seale. He is the son of 

Phetole Seale, who was Ramphaka’s (younger) half-brother. Sontaga came to live at Sedan 

farm in 1965 because he was looking for a job. He performed just about all the tasks on the 

farm. 

 

              Figure 13: Mokgadi Mmaseisa Seale and her husband, Frederick Sontaga Seale  
at their home at Makgakgapatse village, Bolobedu. (Photo: The author)  

 

At the packhouse, he worked as a clerk, and became Ramphaka’s most trusted lieutenant. 

He revealed one of the most exploitative labour practices on the farm. It was mandatory for 

any farm dwellers wanting to leave the place to first get someone to work on his/her behalf 

for three months. That meant that the person leaving was responsible for the farmworker’s 

wages for that period. This was said to be a way of serving a notice period.  



34 
 

“As I was working for someone, I was earning more. While everyone was earning about 

R1.50c a month, I was earning R6. I was lucky that when I started for Jambren, he paid me 

R2 a month. Still, it was too little,” Sontaga recalled.  

This was later corroborated by my mother when I returned home. If, for instance, you 

wanted to leave the farm but could not find anyone to work for you, you had to pay six 

pounds before leaving as a fine. “When your aunt Makoma (my father’s younger sister on 

the left in the picture below) got married in the villages, she couldn’t pay. So, she fled. That 

was the last time we saw her on the farm. We only saw her after we left too.” This was 

confirmed by Makoma.   

 

                  Figure 14: Blood knot: From L to R: Makoma Seale,  
Wellington Seale and Makosha Seale (Photo: Family album)  

Returning to the farm was too risky. The farmers had their puppets in the community who 

could blow the whistle on the ‘fugitives’. If caught, they were subjected to rounds of 

whipping with sjamboks, or murder, in the worst-case scenario. My father and another 

uncle of mine, David Moraka Seale – who had escaped to Johannesburg and the Rustenburg 

platinum mines – had their lucky stars to thank for their daring acts to return to the farm.   



35 
 

It was at dusk on Christmas eve in 1976, when they attempted their homecoming. Father 

recalled that after alighting a bus along the tar road, he embarked on a 5km walk to our 

home on the farm. Danger was always lurking, so he occasionally avoided the narrow road 

and walked in bushes.  

Going straight home was also too risky, so he hid at neighbour’s house on the farm. He then 

slipped into our home at around midnight at the first crack of dawn. He would skip the 

farm and went to spend the day at a relative’s home at Ga-Maphalle village. That was to be 

his last visit to the farm. By the time he returned in 1977, home was in the barren villages 

of Bolobedu.  

David, meanwhile, appeared to push his luck way too far when he attempted his second 

‘homecoming’. After sneaking out of the farm unnoticed, he made another daring attempt 

to return, in grandfather’s car.  Unbeknown to him, the puppets had blown the whistle on 

him. A convoy of ‘Boer commando vehicles’ backed by others on horseback, descended on 

our family compound wielding guns. They ransacked the houses, searching for him. When 

they left, grandfather went to wait for David at a shallow bridge in Mosukudutsi River, 

wary of his surreptitious act. Luckily, word of danger lurking reached him before he arrived 

on the farm.  

Sontaga also revealed Ramphaka’s unbridled loyalty to the Afrikaner farmers. “While I was 

selling cabbage, Ramphaka would say, ‘Sontaga, don’t take anything. How can you steal 

from a person who helps you?’” Sontaga’s recollections were consistent with what my 

father once told me about grandfather. Father narrated an incident when he complained 

about the paltry wages. Grandfather responded: “What do you want the money for? They 

cultivate the mielie fields for you freely, and you have all the food you want.”  

Information from many of the elders suggest that my grandfather was paid relatively well, 

albeit only once a year. Whatever the motive of Afrikaner farmers was, if they were using 

the divide and rule by appeasement strategy, it might just have done enough a trick in 

managing any dissent. The community seemed resigned to submission about the living and 

working conditions on the farm.  



36 
 

This extended to the loss of land. It could have been because of the political power relations 

of the time, that gave white people unfettered powers. In the far-flung parts of the country, 

white people struck so much fear among the indigenous people that they timidly 

surrendered the land without resistance. In their vulnerability, many black farming 

communities put on a mask of stoicism and sturdiness. If it was not the fear factor, the 

whites cowed their ‘subjects’ into submission and malleability.  

“We didn’t realise we were suffering; we just thought it was a normal way of life,” said 

Maseisa Mokgadi Seale, Sontaga’s wife. She was a late comer to the farm, having gone there 

in 1976 to live with her mother after she fell ill. When she recovered, she started working 

on the farm. Her job entailed picking tomatoes in the fields before she was transferred to 

the packhouse to sort and package them before they could be transported to the fresh 

produce markets in Johannesburg or elsewhere.  

“We were earning 20c a day, which we got paid only once after six months. Sometimes we 

would start work at 3am and knock off late in the evening. We didn’t realise that we were 

suffering because there wasn’t much to buy, as we were surviving on maize meal, tomatoes 

and cabbage.”  

I bade the family goodbye and headed to Ga-Maphalle. Some 200 metres into the village, 

the sight of women waiting next to the communal tap greeted me. 

 



37 
 

 

        Figure 15. Residents of Ga-Maphalle village in Bolobedu, outside Modjadjiskloof,   
        queueing for water in the late afternoon. (Photo: The author)  

 

Some had their children firmly strapped on their backs. This is a familiar sight in the 

villages. With the rains failing in recent years, the semi-arid conditions have worsened. The 

communal taps can only yield trickles of water. On some days, they run dry, forcing 

villagers to buy. A 20 litre plastic container costs R2.  

About 500m from the main road is the home of the Rasesepa family. They were among the 

most recognisable families at Sedan. I found the elderly couple, Johannes and Mamotheteni 

Rasesepa, sitting with their elder daughter Mmapula, who is among the land claims 

committee leaders. They, too, told of their exploitation in the hands of the white men on the 

farm.  

But theirs has all the hallmarks of a subplot. For as much as I could remember, stories 

abounded that the family endured constant nightly raids. Their sin: Mmapula happened to 

be in love with one of the white men on the farm. Malewane, as the man was popularly 

known, was a mechanic at Sedan. The white farmers, apparently irked by the cross-racial 

love affair, allegedly wasted no time in setting the police on the couple. 



38 
 

 

 

        Figure 16. From L. Mmamotheteni Rasesepa, her husband  
        Makonya Rasesepa and daughter Mmapula at their home at  

                        Ga-Maphalle village (Photo: The author) 

Three of Mmapula’s children are said to have died under mysterious circumstances. 

Speculation was rife that the white farmers had conspired with a local doctor to kill the 

infants using lethal injection. Although these claims are widely spoken of as the “truth” 

among the former farm dwellers, I could not verify the veracity of such allegations.   

When I put these claims to Mmapula, she could neither deny nor confirm the allegations, 

only saying it was her suspicion. She and her parents, however, confirmed that the police 

and the white farmers had been unequivocal in their communication with her that it was 

“unacceptable for a black person her to have children ‘white children’”, let alone date a 

white person.   

In some instances, each time after giving birth, Mmapula was forced to go and show her 

baby to the police in Duiwelskloof (Modjadjiskloof) as proof that the child was not white. 

She recounted in incident when, after she gave birth to her third child, she ‘stole’ a child of 

Mmaseisa to present to the cops at Duiwelskloof police station. This was also corroborated 

by Mmaseisa as well as her parents.  



39 
 

Many other people narrated the familiar stories of conditions akin to serfdom that led to 

the forced departures and living on barren lands. Their accounts bore a similar and familiar 

account, only dissimilar in their details and specifics. Overall, they were woven together by 

the thread of disparity and fatalism.  

A coalesce of restless ancestral spirits 

After weeks of sustained heatwave in Grahamstown (now renamed Makhanda), a steady 

soft downpour came in the morning, greeting the earth with the splendour of its music. 

Incessant raindrops tapped the window of my room overlooking the iconic 1820 Settlers 

National Monument. A thick blanket of mist covered the monument, which can be said to be 

a symbol of the victory of White South Africans over the Xhosas during one of the episodes 

of the Frontier Wars, and conversely, a painful reminder of the subjugation of the Xhosa 

people and the plundering of their land and theft of their cattle.  

Suddenly, my cellphone rang, its soft ringtone blending with the sound of the rain. The man 

on the other side of the call was Robert Mokgola, whom we had roped in to lead the Seale 

Tribal Land Trust Claim. “We have just received the letter confirming the validity of our 

land claim. Give me a moment, it will land in your (email) inbox shortly,” he said, excitedly.  

It was in the Autumn of 2005, while I was studying journalism at Rhodes University. I 

immediately reached out for my laptop. A quick glance at the email, and I felt a surge of 

excitement through my body.  

The six-page letter concluded as follows, in part:  

“On the basis of the afore-mentioned information, the Office of the Regional Land Claims 

Commission: Limpopo Province is therefore convinced that the Seale Tribal Trust have a 

‘prima-facie’ valid claim in terms of the Restitution of Land Rights Act…”   

In arriving at that decision, the commission found that the Seale Tribal Trust Land Claim 

“substantially complies with the requirements... of the Restitution Act”. 



40 
 

“The Seale community stayed on the farms from time immemorial and enjoyed de facto rights 

of ownership, customary land rights until the arrival of the white people in the 1930s.  The 

community’s rights on the farm were downgraded to labour tenancy until finally removed 

between the years 1950s and 1970s... It is therefore, recommended that the Seale Tribal Land 

Claim be accepted as a prima facie valid claim and be approved for gazetting”.  

I felt as if I was waking from a dream. Suddenly, something that would open a whole new 

realm of possibilities had happened for the sons and daughters of our ancestors who were 

stripped of their land rights and turned into servile labourers. I wanted to let out an 

exultant yell and had to muster all the strength to conceal my excitement. The intermittent, 

haunting cries of a turtle dove hit me with nostalgia about the years gone by at Sedan and 

other farms, our ancestral land.  

That night, I dreamt seeing Sedan, resplendent in its lush, verdant tracts of land. Cattle and 

goats freely grazed in the pastures among the horses and ostriches, while a flock of 

oxpeckers occasionally landed and clung on to the animals to remove ticks and maggots 

from their hides. A pastoral festival of a different kind was in full display as more animals 

grazed opposite the fields that were so abundant with mielies, watermelons, sweet 

potatoes, spinach, cabbage, and other crops. I saw bakkies from the nearby villages lining 

up to buy, as the area was transformed into a fruit and vegetable market. 

Two years earlier, in 2003, officials from the RLCC had written to the community notifying 

us that they were due to visit the farms that were under the land claim to verify the validity 

of our case. That had sparked a frantic effort for the land claims committee to inform and 

brief the community about our impending moment of reckoning.  

Soon our date with the RLCC officials came. That day, as we waited for bakkies to ferry the 

community to the farms to identify our homesteads, graves and other important sites, I saw 

powdery dust particles floating down a stream of golden sunlight. In that beam of light, 

among the motes, I saw images of the elders in our community standing beside the road 

with their luggage and all sorts of paraphernalia, waiting to return to the ancestral land. It 

was a long procession of them.  



41 
 

There was our great-grandfather, Mmabatho, who died in the early 1920s and his 

successor Ramphaka, who died in 1993. Ramphaka’s death came at a critical historical 

juncture in the history of South Africa, when the country was only emerging from the dark 

and virulent dream of apartheid and marching towards the dawn of democracy.  

Ramphaka’s blue ensembles was topped by a crown that completed his regal mien. He was 

flanked by his two wives, Motlhago and Mmamosibudi. Not far from Ramphaka were his 

brothers Mampšhe, Phetole, Mokoboro, as well his sisters Maite and Mokgadi. There were 

other well-known elders in the community, such as Mack and Monyebere Mamorobela, the 

more assertive Ramotsetela Rasesepa, as well as Monyepota Thobakgale and his witty son, 

Lebeko (David), who was popularly known by his nickname Ogies.  

Most of them died when the ideal of land reform was a distant dream, something beyond 

their wildest imagination. Now, many of their grandchildren carry their names, which get 

passed from generation to generation. Yet, the land remains in the hands of the Afrikaner 

farmers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
Figure 17. The gravesite of Ramphaka  
William Seale, at Ga-Maphalle village 
(Photo: The author)  

 

As the bakkies rolled into Sutwane and approached Mosukudutsi River, they came to a halt. 

Everyone alighted. In the front was Ramphaka. He knelt and kissed the ground. The rest of 

the elders followed suit and started performing rituals, scattering snuff and pouring 

libations (i.e. homemade sorghum beer) on the ground while invoking their ancestral 



42 
 

spirits. As soon as they had finished, women broke into ululation. Some elderly men blew 

horns, while others leapt in the air, striking warrior poses in celebration of what was a 

triumphant return to their land. In unison, they sang, danced and pranced around in 

celebration.  

The words of Alvin O. Thompson, Professor of African and Caribbean History, came to 

mind:  

Mother Earth spawned them and to Mother Earth they return so that whether in life or death 

the silver chord that bound the two together would not be broken… For the living, the land 

gave permanence, stability and meaning to the material universe…. As a unit of social value, it 

helped to keep [them] together in a stable and coherent social relationship.  

A brief, crashing thunderstorm interrupted my reverie, and brought me back to reality! My 

grandfather and the other elders were not among the entourage of community members. It 

all seemed like their restless spirits visiting me, reminding me that what they yearned for 

was a permanent return to the ‘promised land’.  

We then moved from one household to another, often splitting in family groups to identify 

some of our respective important sites.  Our family homestead was among the first sites we 

visited. What was once a bustling home comprising several houses was a shadow of the 

place it was. Broken, knee-high mud walls anchored with stones was all that was left.  The 

ruins were a common feature at many other homes.  

After about three hours, when weariness began to take its toll, the ‘expatriates’ gathered at 

the main farmhouse, near the home of Jambren. They were met by two young white men 

who introduced themselves as the grandsons of Jambren. I was surprised at the hospitality 

with which they received us. At some point, they asked us if we would be happy to accept 

money as compensation for the land loss.  

As I sat on the wooden bench among on the elevated area overlooking the farm, my mind 

flashed back to my interviews with some of the community members about their forced 

departure the other farms. Their stories were dominated by the same message; they could 

no longer bear the exploitation or physical assaults on their ancestral land. 



43 
 

From landowners to roving pariahs 

It was in the early hours of the first day of February of 1977 that our family took whatever 

goods they could and tossed them into my grandfather’s bakkie. They hurriedly clambered 

on to it and off they crossed Mosukudutsi River and headed to new destinations. Others, 

including women with children wailing on their backs, either trudged all the way to 

neighbouring villages or walked to the main road to hitchhike. Fear stalked every corner of 

the farm. Although the farmers did not want to lose their convenient source of labour, it 

seemed that they were not that averse to the community leaving.  

Only my grandfather and his second wife, Mmamosibudi Seale, remained on the farm, 

unable to come to terms with leaving the land that had been the only home they had ever 

known since birth. For Ramphaka, his sense of self seemed so tied to the land that it 

defined his identity. In his case, it was more of the land owning him as much – more than he 

had ever hoped of owning it.   

 

As for the ‘expatriates’, the search for a new home turned them into roving pariahs – 

overnight. For several days, they trudged from one village to another in the semi-arid 

villages, searching for a place to call home. As my mother found out, the home became ‘the 

here’, that became ‘the there’ that kept changing. It was the experiences not too different 

from that of refugees, spending time running, relocating and waiting in vain.  

On the first night, she took refuge at a house of one of Ramphaka’s relatives at Ga-Maphalle.  

The following morning, she embarked on a long trudge to Mohlabaneng, about 8km away, 

with two-year-old Nancy firmly strapped on her back and Teddy (8) and Meshack (5) in 

tow. Her travails continued with another walk on the next day, this time to the 

neighbouring village of Jamela, about 5km away (See pages 7 and 130).  There, they 

squatted at the home of Ramphaka’s younger sister, Maite, commonly known as Mfolane.  



44 
 

 

     Figure 18. The home where my mother and other relatives stayed in at Jamela village,  
     Bolobedu, after they were forced off their land. INSERT: Maite “Mfolane” Seale,  
     Ramphaka’s younger sister. (Photo: The author)  

 

While mother was there, she and Isaac’s wife, also known as Maite, started searching for a 

permanent home. Factors such as the availability of water and proximity to the road all 

played their part in determining a suitable settlement. As was the norm at the time, tribal 

sentiments creeped in.  

“We first went to Ga-Maphalle because it was closer to the farm. But we didn’t like the place 

because there was no water. We moved to Shawela (marked D on the map on page 7) but we 

didn’t like the fact that there were too many Shangaans. At Jamela, there was no water too. 

So, we settled for Mohlabaneng,” mother recalled.  

It was my uncle, David Moraka Seale, who had identified the site at Ga-Monwana section of 

Mohlabaneng. “I wanted a site that was closer to the road so that I could easily catch the 

trucks to the farms. But your father insisted that he wanted to stay next to David and Isaac,” 

mother said.  

In any case, it was a decree in Mohlabaneng that people who came from the farms were 

allocated a site at Ga-Monwana section. Almost by design, the settlement was nothing more 



45 
 

than an impoverished hinterland to provide labour to the farmers, in a similar way that 

townships were to the metropolis in the urban areas. All the yards at Ga-Monwana were 

tiny, about the size of pieces of land cramped with matchbox houses in urban areas. The 

settlement was a ramshackle arrangement of rickety mud huts with thatch roofs, 

interspersed with a few modest corrugated iron houses. 

Intermittent rains made the task of building the new home difficult. As mother and Maite 

(Isaac’s wife) were building the huts, it would start raining and wash off the clay soil. When 

it subsided, they started building again, but it would rain again. One of the huts that mother 

built was a mokobe (grass thatch roof hut that is used as a makeshift kitchen). Yet, even the 

rest of the huts were not too different from it.   

In the words of Doris Lessing, the Nobel Prize-winning author, the huts “looked like natural 

growths from the ground, rather man-made dwellings. It was a though a giant black hand 

had reached down from the sky, picked up a handful of sticks and grass, and dropped them 

magically on the earth in the form of huts. They were grass-roofed, with pole walls 

plastered with mud, and single row doors, with no windows”.  

It was as if the huts were built with a sense of foreboding about the future.  As for the 

‘kitchen,’ plumes of thick smoke sipped through the grass thatch roof each time we made 

the fire. As Doris Lessing would say, “the smoke from the fires inside percolated through 

the thatch or drifted in clouds from the doorway, so that each had the appearance of 

smouldering slowly within” Residents were not allowed to breed livestock. If anyone dared 

keep goats, cattle, donkeys or pigs, they risked a hefty fine. Yet, goats and cattle from 

Mohlabaneng roamed the streets of Ga-Monwana. Residents of Mohlabaneng also despised 

those from Ga-Monwana so much that derogatory epithets such as makompo (backward 

people from the farms), thieves and bullies were common.  

In his novel, Down Second Avenue, one of South Africa’s finest writers, Es’kia Mphahlele, 

describes this incongruity at his birthplace at Maupaneng village, outside Polokwane, as 

follows: 

“On one side of the river were Christian communities living together according to whether 

they were Methodists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformists. On the other side there were tribal 



46 
 

kraal communities. The Christians called them ‘heathens’. We were often told there were 

witches’ among the ‘heathens’; and so we were not to walk on their footprints if we knew they 

had walked there; we were told to hold our breath when we passed them because they 

smeared witches’ fat on their bodies; we were told not to stray among their villages because 

they were addicted to whipping Christians. But we often went across to look for lost goats or 

donkeys and they received us warmly, if with aloofness, at their communal fire-places.”  

No sooner had our family settled at Mohlabaneng than tragedy struck. Isaac’s wife died 

after a short illness. It was this tragedy that precipitated Ramphaka’s departure from 

Sedan, so that he could be closer to his subjects in the diaspora. But then, there was a 

serious dilemma for him that shone the spotlight on the Balobedu traditional leadership 

regulations. Whatever village Ramphaka wanted to move to, the Induna of the settlement 

was to vacate his position because Ramphaka was deemed more senior. This meant that 

Ramphaka could not register the site at the village he wanted to stay under his name. After 

squatting for a while at Jamela, he bought a house at Ga-Maphalle, which he registered 

under Wilson’s name.  

Before that, he had already taken his livestock to a village called Polaseng, about 20km 

away from Sedan. Ironically, the name Polaseng means the place of farming, although its 

landscape was just as dreary as many other villages in Bolobedu. It was the beginning of 

the loss of livestock. The cattle disappeared mysteriously.  

The loss of land not only resulted in the loss of livestock and property; it also marked the 

beginning of the crumbling of the Seale dynasty. Many of the subjects are now scattered in 

barren villages in Bolobedu and parts of Gazankulu, cursed by poverty and deprivation. As 

Sol Plaatje once said: “More native families crossed the river and went inland… and as 

nothing had since been heard of them, it would seem that they were still wandering 

somewhere, and incidentally becoming well versed in the (circumstances that were) 

responsible for their compulsory unsettlement.”  

For some, like my mother, there was only one way to survive: join the destitute masses in 

the villages travelling to and from the farms for work daily. “When we finished building two 

huts, after a month, Jambren came here with (Alfred) Mokgola and said, ‘come back to work 



47 
 

on Monday’. I went. What would I have eaten when I didn’t even have maize meal? It was 

not like I had a choice.”  

Renowned South African author, Bessie Head (2016), aptly explains the devastating impact 

of this legislation on indigenous people, in a moving preamble to Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in 

South Africa 

 

“It is possible that no other legislation has so deeply affected the lives of black people in South 

Africa as the Natives’ Land Act of 1913. It created overnight a floating landless proletariat 

whose labour could be used and manipulated at will, and ensured that ownership of the land 

had finally and securely passed into the hands of the ruling white race…”  

In my state of delirium, I saw Wilson in front of me, clad in white clothes. His untimely death 

in March 2013 hit me like an arrow piercing through my heart. Prior to his death, Nelson  

 

Figure 19. Visionary: Mothoka Wilson  
Seale (Photo:  The author) 

 

Mandela had been ill, and he had, at every opportunity, reminded us to keep pushing for the 

land claim before Madiba died. I remembered his words when we last met:  

“If Mandela dies before we get our land, we might as well kiss it goodbye. Each time I tune in 

the radio to listen to the news of late, there is a story after story of corruption involving 

politicians unfairly benefitting from the land claims. I heard that some politicians are even 



48 
 

flirting with big farmers whose farms are on the list of those under our land claims. I am 

scared because some of our land is now owned by powerful farmers like ZZ2.”  

When I looked at him again, he appeared in a swollen river, thrashing about vainly to avoid 

drowning. Iron bands of panic tightened around my chest. It took everything I had not to 

scream aloud. The piercing sound of siren on the farm – signaling the end of lunchtime on 

the farm. The siren shook me from my trance. For the Seale community, it was time to go 

back home, to the villages. We left the farm with a feeling of satisfaction and great 

anticipation that soon, maybe soon, the real homecoming would happen.  

Later in 2004, officials from the RLCC visited the community to do a membership 

verification process. Despite the slow communication lines at the time, word had spread 

like wildfire that the ‘land claims commission’ would be coming. As many as 200 members 

of the Seale community, mostly elders, flocked to the local community hall at Mohlabaneng 

village. Apart from screening the community members, the process was also to ensure that 

there were no counterclaims to our land claim. We were more upbeat that it was a matter 

of time before our land was restored. Or so we thought.  

The elusive quest to reclaim the land of our ancestors  

A horde of beetles frantically rolled balls of animal dung through an uneven, threadbare 

surface towards a lush area in the garden outside my cottage. Time and again, as the 

procession of beetles appeared to reach their destination, two giant lizards appeared and 

menacingly slithered towards the beetles’ territory. This forced the beetles to scurry away. 

As soon as the lizards were out of sight, the beetles would resume their arduous task. Yet, 

the lizards lied in wait, ready to thwart the beetles’ quest to reach their homely destination. 

I was fixated on this activity when my cellphone rang. It was my uncle Wilson Mothoka 

Seale, alerting me to the news he had just received from Robert Mokgola about an email 

from the RLCC. The farmers were opposing our land claim. I rushed to the house and 

grabbed my laptop.  



49 
 

“They [Seale Community] did not occupy any white farms under the authority of a chief or a 

leader designated by a tribal hierarchy. There is no evidence that they occupied the white 

farms as a group in accordance with ancient customs and traditions. Indeed, there is no 

evidence whatsoever that a community existed on the properties in question.” 

And so went the farmers’ response to our land claim.  The 12-page document, under the 

headline, “Landowners Response: Seale Community Land Claim”, was dated March 2006. It 

was just over a year after the RLCC found that our land claim was valid and that we had a 

prima facie case. In their response, the farmers summed up their case as follows:  

“It is the landowners’ submission that the RLCC has used his imagination in constructing that 

a community ever existed on the property as there is absolutely no information contained in 

the acceptance report which meets the definition of a community...”  

Wilson sounded distraught and agitated. “Remember that day when a black cat crossed the 

road in front of us at Mooketsi. I told you it was a curse, and you wouldn’t listen.”  

For all his natural wisdom, the one thing that Wilson could not untangle himself from was 

superstition. He had this tendency to attribute any misfortune to an invisible, strange force 

that he believed had cast an evil spell on him. He would often dabble himself in herbal 

treatments and other type of traditional medicines, believing that it was an effective way to 

protect himself from whatever sorcery he thought of.  

At the time he phoned me, I was in Johannesburg, having just started a new career as a 

journalist for The Star, one of South Africa’s leading daily newspapers at the time. I was 

charged – determined to do everything within my powers to fight any attempts to thwart 

our quest to reclaim our birthright. I was also encouraged by the fact that Robert Mokgola 

was already an established legal practitioner.  

Firstly, we could not understand why the RLCC had, in their document, referred to the 

farmers as the “landowners”. More absurd was the farmers’ argument that our community 

did not exist as a community. Our family had close ties with the Modjadji Royal House and 

my great-grandparents’ role in the traditional leadership were acknowledged by the tribal 

council.  The farmers had further raised a legal question about the land in dispute, 



50 
 

suggesting that it did not fall within the Land Restitution Act. They claimed that they had 

acquired the land before 1913 and indeed from the date 1892.  

“... The only conclusion that the landowners can arrive at is that the claim is without 

foundation and invalid. Indeed, with the information contained in the acceptance report, it 

would seem that the claim is in fact frivolous and vexatious.”  

This was an unfounded and baseless claim because my great-grandfather, Mmabatho Seale, 

had been the Induna on the land since the 1880s. Nevertheless, we were not too bothered 

because we had it on good record that the white colonialists only arrived at our land in the 

1930s. Almost everyone, of not all, of the elders in our community knew that Mrs. Graham 

was the first white person to appear on our land and declare it as hers. This piece of 

information was passed from one generation to another. 

Curiously, and disgracefully, the farmers based their argument on affidavits of two former 

farmworkers who at the time of deposing their affidavits worked at ZZ2. There was a sense 

of betrayal about this, but we understood that conditions at the time were such that 

farmworkers were not only ignorant and oblivious to the issues around land ownership, 

but that they also felt beholden to their masters. Besides, the fact that the two were 

working for the farmers meant that they were more inclined – and indeed obliged – to 

support their masters’ case.  

Not only were the affidavits too limited on information, but they were also riddled with 

factual inaccuracies, including the date of some of the farm dwellers’(forced) departures 

from the land. They stated, for instance, that the Seales departed Sedan in 1999, which was 

ridiculous and laughable.  

As the land claims committee, we had known all along that the farmers would want to 

mount a strong legal challenge to our case. When eventually it came, we regarded it as a 

declaration of war on the community. “The fight is on,” said Wilson. He and Isaac were at 

the time working at ZZ2, the firm which had acquired some of the farms where our land 

was located. “If it means losing our job, let it be. We won’t give up our land cheaply,” said 

Wilson, upon hearing that ZZ2 was among the farmers opposing our land claim.  



51 
 

Now it was up to the RLCC to decide on the date for our matter to be heard at the Land 

Claims Court in Randburg. We were relieved when in March 2006, we received a letter 

from the RLCC showing that the commission had no intention to withdraw our land claim. 

In the letter, the commission also informed the farmers, through their legal 

representatives, that it had no intention to withdraw our case. It also indicated that it was 

ready to negotiate with the white farmers for a settlement that would pave the way for the 

return or our land or a compensation, whatever the outcome was to be.  

“The commission wishes to propose negotiations around settlement of (the) Seale Community 

Land Claim, unless your client’s (sic) are of the view that no settlement will be reached. In the 

event of the latter, the commission shall have no option but either to refer the matter to the 

Land Claims Court or to make a submission to the Minister (of Agriculture and Land Affairs) 

...”  (See appendix 5 on page 127).  

Now, there was renewed hope that it was just a matter of time before our land was 

returned. However, we started receiving emails from the RLCC for meetings between our 

community and the farmers. All of these were to no avail. And so the waiting continued.   

As time dragged on with no resolution to our land claim, another complication arose. 

Around 2009, the Modjadji Royal Council apparently tried to ensnare our cause. 

Clandestine visits by their messengers to our elders became frequent, with orders that they 

were wanted at Khetakoni, the seat of the Modjadji traditional leadership in Bolobedu, 

about 40km away. The purpose, as we later found out, was to co-opt them into their 

committees to claim the tracts of land around the Letaba-Mooketsi valley. Our land was 

among those that were earmarked for incorporation into their claim.  

We were taken aback by this sudden move because the Modjadji Royal Council knew all 

along about our family’s close ties to their lineage. Despite their mystic and legendary 

rainmaking powers associated with the Queen Modjadji dynasty waning over recent years, 

the royal house continued to wield power all over their subjects. Their word held so much 

sway that if any villager were summoned, he would literally go there running.  

Suddenly, we were faced with challenges from two fronts, because of the pending case with 

the farmers. In the case of the Modjadji Tribal Council, we viewed their actions as not too 



52 
 

different from the position taken by the late Zulu Monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini, who 

wanted territories he governed in Kwa-Zulu excluded from government’s land reform. We 

regarded this move by the Modjadji Royal Council with a great deal of contempt and 

exasperation because it was nothing more than an intent to usurp our rights over land, and 

an act of provocation.  

Alarmed, we visited Khethakoni to negotiate that we be allowed to reclaim our land 

independently. The delegation comprised Robert Mokgola, his elder brother Nelson 

(Mokgola), my uncle Wilson Seale and myself. After about an hour of putting our case to the 

tribal council, we were given two letters, one confirming that the Seales existed as a 

community under the leadership of William Ramphaka Seale, and the other endorsing the 

Seale Community as the rightful and legitimate claimant of the above-listed farms. 

“We, the Balobedu ba Modjadji Land Claims Committee acknowledge that Seale Community is 

part of the Balobedu and have lodged their land claim independently. We therefore have no 

objection to their claim and as such give them a green light to go ahead with their claim. We 

will support them all the way until the farms they are claiming will be [sick] given back to 

them.  

“This endorsement put to rest any dispute or conflict of interest that may have existed 

between the Seale Community and any other community that may have lodged a counter 

claim against them. We hope this will assist the commission to fast track the restitution of the 

above mentioned farms to the Seale Community, which is the rightful and lawful owner.” (See 

appendix 6 on page 128). 

 There was a palpable feeling of relief as we headed back home. Our case had been 

strengthened by backing of the Modjadji Royal Council. Buoyed by this, we shifted our 

attention to the RLCC, pursuing our case with more zeal and grit. Our understanding was 

the next course of action was for the matter to be heard in the Land Claims Court in 

Randburg, Johannesburg, with white commercial farmers diametrically opposing our claim. 

However, as matters stood, we were clutching at straws. Suddenly, the RLCC officials, 

whom we had pinned all our hopes on, seemed determined in contriving to thwart our 

quest to reclaim our land. A long spell of sustained silence followed. This had been 



53 
 

happening since 2006 when we received a notice that the farmers were opposing our land 

claim, but we thought the silence was only temporary because the commission needed 

more time to o resolve the matter.  

 

When reality dawned that nothing was forthcoming, we approached the office in 2011. 

Much to our dismay, and adding insult to injury, the RLCC said the verification records 

were missing and that a proper verification of the claimants was to be done. Yet, this was 

never done. Our hopes were again raised later that year, after our complaints, when we 

were informed that a directive had been issued for our land claim be prioritised.  Progress 

meetings were to be held with the community every six months and a plan of action was to 

be shared with the community by January 2012. So we were promised.  

 

All of that was never done, and another sustained lull followed, this time last for five years 

(2017). This was despite our repeated pleas, through emails, requesting the commission to 

come and address the community on the progress update. Our requests were partly 

because sus