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Imagine owning a piece of paradise but not being able to live in it or even visit it. The Manyeleti Nature Reserve is such a paradise in the thorny bushveld – a huge wildlife park situated between the Kruger National Park and the Sabi Sand Reserve. Visitors from abroad and wealthy locals can enjoy the Big Five, which roam freely, and the delights of a concessioned lodge. A package at the lodge’s camp costs R7 000 a night.
But it’s not for the Mnisi clan, who once owned the land but have struggled for 20 years to get their claim put on the radar of South Africa’s slow land reform programme.
The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights in Limpopo found the claim valid more than a decade ago and the process to transfer ownership to the clan began. Still, the people who once owned the land live close by – like internal exiles.
Government is making the money, as are the lodge concessionaires, but the Mnisi Tribal Authority is losing out as a battle drags on over which province the land falls into.
Manyeleti is part of the Greater Kruger National Park, which comprises 20 unfenced Big Five nature reserves west of the park.
At first, the land was under the administration of the Limpopo province, which undertook the first verification process of the land claim.
It was scuppered when government changed the provincial borders and the area then fell under the administration of Mpumalanga. This followed violent protests by Bushbuckridge residents, who wanted to be governed by Mpumalanga instead.
Manyeleti Claimants’ Trust chairperson Johan Ndlovu smells a rat in the delay of the settlement. He said that, like most land claims in Mpumalanga, a concerned group sprang up and put a spanner in the works when the land was due for transfer to the Mnisi clan.
“The verification of our claim was done when the area still fell under the administration of Limpopo in 2002 and the commission approved it. When the land had to be transferred to 253 families, the Mpumalanga land commissioner listened to a concerned group and commissioned a new verification report,” said Ndlovu.
The land could therefore not be transferred because the second report invalidated 101 Mnisi claimants.
Linda Page, the spokesperson for the rural development and land reform minister, said the Mpumalanga regional land claims office commissioned the second verification process of claimants due to complaints.
“The delay in transferring the land to the claimants has been and is still being caused by the trustees, who are failing to or are unwilling to accept the [new] verification report. The claimants are, in essence, the ones holding the key to ensuring the speedy resolution of this matter so as to enable the commission to transfer the land to the beneficiaries,” she said.
Three concessionaires – Honeyguide, Tintswalo and Pungwe – are paying R924 000 in rent to the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency a year, which the claimants cannot receive until the “dispute” is resolved.
Now, Ndlovu is worried that the department of environmental affairs allocated R45 million to the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency for environmental infrastructure upgrades, but the rightful owners are not being consulted.
“We heard in January that the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency employed people to do fencing and remove bushes. Our children, as beneficiaries of the land, should have benefited from the jobs, instead of people brought in by councillors [from elsewhere],” said Ndlovu.
They want a similar setup to their neighbours, whose children benefit from the 13 184-hectare Mala Mala Game Reserve, which was bought for R939.4 million by government and transferred to the N’wandlamhlarhi Community Property Association three years ago.
Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency spokesperson Kholofelo Nkambule said the agency couldn’t pay the concession fees to the Mnisi community until the land claim was resolved.
She said the agency was spending R16 million a year to manage and maintain the Manyeleti Nature Reserve.
