OUR VOICES OF RESISTANCE WILL NO LONGER BE SILENCED!
As the community of the Richtersveld, we are not new to fighting for our country. For centuries we have been resisting colonialism and challenging the South African government for the return of our land that was stolen centuries ago, during the 1800s. On Wednesday the 7th of March 2024 we embarked on a silent protest at our ancestral graves at Boegoebaai. For this to happen we had to get security clearance from Alexkor, the State-Owned diamond mining company, which continues to mine diamonds on our ancestral land. As indigenous artists and activists from the Richtersveld, we thought it was important to protest at Boegoebaai in all black (a symbol of mourning) with black duct tape binding our hands and mouths to symbolize how our voices and resistance as Richtersvelders have been muzzled and silenced.
Despite our community winning a landmark case against Alexkor in the Constitutional Court in 2003, and despite our community having a 49% stake in the diamond mining in the Richtersveld, we still do not reap the benefits and only received a measly R3750 once off payment as compensation for the vast wealth extracted from our land since 1927.
Now our communal land has been targeted by the State and its various development agencies, along with transnational corporations, all guided by the imperial interests of Global North countries for the launch of the Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen Project. This is a mega state funded billion-dollar project to build a harbor, port, rail and green hydrogen plant, which will require over 240 000 hectares of our land for the solar and wind farms to yield sufficient energy for green hydrogen production.
While we are not opposed to renewable energy and much needed development for our communities, our protest is concerned with how these processes have been pushed onto us without our communities’ consent. Our land is being grabbed by the Northern Cape Economic Development Agency (NCEDA), which has not sought our consent and is trying to force us into an access agreement in terms of which we will receive a measly R3 a hectare annually for the lease of 174 000 hectares of our land.
"Our land is not for sale, this is the land of our ancestors that has for centuries been damaged by mining, which has not benefitted our communities… in fact they have made us beggars on our own land." – Willem Cloete, Richtersveld Activist
If NCEDA takes forward its plans without listening to our concerns, more than a third of the land of the Richtersveld will be grabbed for this project and we will only be able to access part of Boegoebaai as part of a conservancy. Boegoebaai is one of the first sites of colonial violence and dispossession in the Richtersveld. The two Boegoeberge are sites of not only our ancestral graves but some of the most critical indigenous fauna and flora of the Richtersveld biosphere. What about our rights as indigenous people?
For more information contact:
Geralt Cloete – 0820756759
geraltcloete@gmail.com
Alex Hotz – 0820619674
vvvtnamakwaland@gmail.com
Issued by Nama Khoi Productions and VVVT Namakwaland.
Nama Khoi Productions was established in 2022 by a group of young individuals and Khoi activists involved in the preservation, promotion, and development of Khoi culture. We are in the Northern Cape, Richtersveld, where the Nama indigenous people are located. Nama Khoi Productions reimagine Khoi culture through a dance between past and present.
VVVT Namakwaland is a social movement organized across villages and towns in Namakwaland that are impacted by mining and other forms of extractivism. The movement seeks to inform, raise consciousness, and resist land dispossession.
