Give us back our Pretoria Land — Tshwane Descendants

Pretoria is embroiled in massive land-claim dispute with descendants of Ndebele King Tshwane, whom have claimed ownership of the entire city centre.

Pretoria is embroiled in massive land-claim dispute with descendants of Ndebele King Tshwane, whom have claimed ownership of the entire city centre.

The regional land claims commissioner for Gauteng and North West has missed a 60-day Land Claims Court deadline for publishing in the Government Gazette a claim by nearly 700000 people for ownership of Tshwane, including the entire Pretoria city centre.

The city - measuring 687.54km² and home to national government departments' headquarters, the Afrikaner heritage memorial the Voortrekker monument and Freedom Park - is at the centre of one of the biggest land claims ever to be contested in court.

In February, the court ordered that the claim, which was rejected in 2003, be gazetted to allow for objections.

If the land claim is successful, the implication is that the claimants will own Pretoria, with all rates revenue and taxes going to them - seven tribes that claim lineage to Ndebele king Tshwane.

Areas included in the claim are the seat of government - the Union Buildings - plus the Voortrekker Monument, Freedom Park, Loftus rugby stadium, government buildings and embassies.

Minnesh Singh, the lawyer representing the claimants, said he would notify the regional land claims commissioner that he was in contempt of court and give him five days in which to comply before pursuing further legal action.

According to court papers, the tribes - who were "subsistence farmers" with livestock - were tortured and some killed when they were forced out of Pretoria between August 1913 and 1970.

They were loaded into trucks and dumped on the outskirts of Pretoria, "where there was not enough land for grazing and cropping".

The community claims some were left with permanent injuries owing to torture. Some died of starvation.

History reveals that the Southern Transvaal Ndebele settled in the area, which later became Pretoria, in the 1600s.

In 2000, the then Pretoria City Council adopted the name Tshwane in recognition of the Ndebele king.

The Tshwane Community land claimants, made up of seven tribes - Modimokoana, Bapo, Moletlane Ndebele, Manala, Letswalo, Bakgatla and Malete - lodged their claim in 1998 but it was rejected.

The Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs said it could not gazette the claim because the claimants' lawyers had refused to meet the Commission on Land Restitution to clarify which areas their clients were claiming.

Department spokesman Linda Page said the commission was therefore unable to make an in loco inspection of the claimed sites.