Rather than let police tear down his shack and remove him from his property, Thulani Nelani, 41, locked himself inside and set his house on fire — insisting he would rather die than be taken from the land his ancestors called home for more than 100 years.
The teargas thrown inside the shack and rubber bullets fired at the house only hardened his resolve to stay inside.
But eventually, police broke down the door and dragged him out of the shack, saving the father of three.
This was just the latest eviction for Boknes residents.
“We live and work here, but more than that we were born here,” Nelani said.
“The graves of our ancestors are scattered across this land.”
Nestled along the Eastern Cape coastline between Alexandria and Kenton-on-Sea, Boknes is an unassuming and clean town with a few permanent residents and holiday homes.
Off the R75, coming into the village, the eponymous named Bokness Road gives way to a four-way stop.
Ahead is Galjoen Street, where a further 10-minute drive leads to Cannon Rocks.
To the left is Hoof Street, which goes to the town’s market and right is an unmarked gravel road — a bypass from Alexandria that goes past the Woody Cape Nature Reserve.
A two minutes drive along the gravel road is another right turn.
Here is an eyesore incongruous to the verdant hills and lush groves, a dumpsite but also what was home to the last of the evicted Boknes residents.
Last month, a squadron of police armed with a court order came to remove the residents.
While others accepted their fate when their informal settlements homes were destroyed, Nelani stayed and resisted.
The confrontation had been long coming.
Ndlambe Municipality, which Boknes falls under, was granted a high court order to evict the 14 squatters from the area called ekawunsileni [council] on the basis that it was a dump site.
“If they say this place is unsuitable then they must find us another place here in Boknes,” Nelani said.
“Other graves have already been erased and houses are now built where they used to be.
“It is now our responsibility that we should safeguard these not to be destroyed.”
According to Nelani, his grandfather’s grave, which is a stone’s throw away from ekawunsileni, is one of several of the last original settlers at Boknes while the dumpsite was created long after they settled there.
The June 4 eviction is the third of its nature but according to Nelani, it is the first where after three generations, the family would be completely removed from the farmlands and condemned to township life.
Standing over the graves, a teary Zwelibanzi Lamani recalls how they buried Nelani’s uncle in the area now covered with shrubs.
“It’s terrible.
“No-one can be at peace knowing these people sleeping [buried] here will also be erased and forgotten,” Lamani said.
Lamani, who was born in 1949, is the last of the generation born from the original settlement just past the four-way stop on Galjoen Street which is now filled with upmarket houses.
Driving towards Cannon Rocks, Lamani points to a creek punctuating the two towns where some of the original settlers were buried.
After the first removals, his family along with many others at the time settled across Galjoen Street next to a dam in what is now a private farm.
“What is happening is exactly what happened in 1979.
“It was a whole village then and homes were destroyed and people told to leave and many at the time were resettled in Glenmore past Grahamstown [Makhanda] to start a township there,” Lamani said.
According to Lamani, about five families remained at the time and were allowed to settle at ekawunsileni, continuing to work as hired help on farms or being employed at the municipality.
With this arrangement, the then-municipality later built three houses in the area where the families with members employed by the municipality would stay.
Lamani said while having raised his family at ekawunsileni he left for Alexandria in 2016.
He returned when he retired from the municipality.
“I came back because my daughter is now being evicted here.
“My sister’s house will also be taken down next,” he said.
Patricia Ngcosholo put up her shack in 2021.
“I do not know what we will do,” she said.
“Our furniture was also taken to Marselle and we have to build our house in the plot they have allocated us,” she said.
Nomsa Sonanzi said she ended up at ekawunsileni after she was let go by a farmer after the death of her husband.
Illiterate and unable to even recall her own age, Sonanzi does not even know the year she settled at ekawunsileni.
“I had nowhere to live and my clothes and belongings were thrown into the street.”
The evicted were set to stay at the outskirts of Marselle, a Kenton-on-Sea township a 10 minutes drive away from Bokness.
Municipal spokesperson Cecil Mbolekwa said the residents were being moved to an area approved for “upgrading of informal settlements”.
“The place they living in is a dumpsite and by law residential sites must have a buffer of 500m from a dumpsite,” Mbolekwa said.
“The people are being moved to an area approved for upgrading of informal settlements with water tanks and low flush toilets being provided with a view of providing permanent houses.”
For the families evicted, however, Marselle does not present a viable solution.
Mongameli January, 31, who moved from Marselle to ekawunsileni in 2018 said the area was prone to flooding.
“It is worse here and they have left us with nothing,” January said.
“My furniture is broken and when they tore our houses down they destroyed the material.
“It was just dumped here and we had to find places where we could spend the night,” he said.
Toto van der Merwe, a former attorney who tried to stop the evictions, said it was unconstitutional.
“They did not follow any of the provisions in the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act,” Van der Merwe said.
“They also created the conditions for the illegality [with the creation of the dumping site] and then evicted for the conditions for that illegality.
“My biggest gripe is that it cannot be right that when people do not have access to funding they do not have access to the law.
“Those people cannot afford a lawyer and often do not understand the terms communicated to them. It’s a crying shame.
“It’s an infringement of their constitutional rights.
“Why would you worry about 14 informal structures when municipal employees stay in houses right across from the same dumpsite,” he said.
He said he had reached out to human rights lawyers to see if the case against the municipality could be pursued.
For Lamani however, the evictions are about erasing their place in the history of Boknes.
“The poor are yet to realise this so-called freedom in SA because the benefits of this so-called democracy are only for those with money,” he said.
HeraldLIVE
Boknes informal settlement residents fight evictions
Families claim to have lived on land for more than 100 years
Rather than let police tear down his shack and remove him from his property, Thulani Nelani, 41, locked himself inside and set his house on fire — insisting he would rather die than be taken from the land his ancestors called home for more than 100 years.
The teargas thrown inside the shack and rubber bullets fired at the house only hardened his resolve to stay inside.
But eventually, police broke down the door and dragged him out of the shack, saving the father of three.
This was just the latest eviction for Boknes residents.
“We live and work here, but more than that we were born here,” Nelani said.
“The graves of our ancestors are scattered across this land.”
Nestled along the Eastern Cape coastline between Alexandria and Kenton-on-Sea, Boknes is an unassuming and clean town with a few permanent residents and holiday homes.
Off the R75, coming into the village, the eponymous named Bokness Road gives way to a four-way stop.
Ahead is Galjoen Street, where a further 10-minute drive leads to Cannon Rocks.
To the left is Hoof Street, which goes to the town’s market and right is an unmarked gravel road — a bypass from Alexandria that goes past the Woody Cape Nature Reserve.
A two minutes drive along the gravel road is another right turn.
Here is an eyesore incongruous to the verdant hills and lush groves, a dumpsite but also what was home to the last of the evicted Boknes residents.
Last month, a squadron of police armed with a court order came to remove the residents.
While others accepted their fate when their informal settlements homes were destroyed, Nelani stayed and resisted.
The confrontation had been long coming.
Ndlambe Municipality, which Boknes falls under, was granted a high court order to evict the 14 squatters from the area called ekawunsileni [council] on the basis that it was a dump site.
“If they say this place is unsuitable then they must find us another place here in Boknes,” Nelani said.
“Other graves have already been erased and houses are now built where they used to be.
“It is now our responsibility that we should safeguard these not to be destroyed.”
According to Nelani, his grandfather’s grave, which is a stone’s throw away from ekawunsileni, is one of several of the last original settlers at Boknes while the dumpsite was created long after they settled there.
The June 4 eviction is the third of its nature but according to Nelani, it is the first where after three generations, the family would be completely removed from the farmlands and condemned to township life.
Standing over the graves, a teary Zwelibanzi Lamani recalls how they buried Nelani’s uncle in the area now covered with shrubs.
“It’s terrible.
“No-one can be at peace knowing these people sleeping [buried] here will also be erased and forgotten,” Lamani said.
Lamani, who was born in 1949, is the last of the generation born from the original settlement just past the four-way stop on Galjoen Street which is now filled with upmarket houses.
Driving towards Cannon Rocks, Lamani points to a creek punctuating the two towns where some of the original settlers were buried.
After the first removals, his family along with many others at the time settled across Galjoen Street next to a dam in what is now a private farm.
“What is happening is exactly what happened in 1979.
“It was a whole village then and homes were destroyed and people told to leave and many at the time were resettled in Glenmore past Grahamstown [Makhanda] to start a township there,” Lamani said.
According to Lamani, about five families remained at the time and were allowed to settle at ekawunsileni, continuing to work as hired help on farms or being employed at the municipality.
With this arrangement, the then-municipality later built three houses in the area where the families with members employed by the municipality would stay.
Lamani said while having raised his family at ekawunsileni he left for Alexandria in 2016.
He returned when he retired from the municipality.
“I came back because my daughter is now being evicted here.
“My sister’s house will also be taken down next,” he said.
Patricia Ngcosholo put up her shack in 2021.
“I do not know what we will do,” she said.
“Our furniture was also taken to Marselle and we have to build our house in the plot they have allocated us,” she said.
Nomsa Sonanzi said she ended up at ekawunsileni after she was let go by a farmer after the death of her husband.
Illiterate and unable to even recall her own age, Sonanzi does not even know the year she settled at ekawunsileni.
“I had nowhere to live and my clothes and belongings were thrown into the street.”
The evicted were set to stay at the outskirts of Marselle, a Kenton-on-Sea township a 10 minutes drive away from Bokness.
Municipal spokesperson Cecil Mbolekwa said the residents were being moved to an area approved for “upgrading of informal settlements”.
“The place they living in is a dumpsite and by law residential sites must have a buffer of 500m from a dumpsite,” Mbolekwa said.
“The people are being moved to an area approved for upgrading of informal settlements with water tanks and low flush toilets being provided with a view of providing permanent houses.”
For the families evicted, however, Marselle does not present a viable solution.
Mongameli January, 31, who moved from Marselle to ekawunsileni in 2018 said the area was prone to flooding.
“It is worse here and they have left us with nothing,” January said.
“My furniture is broken and when they tore our houses down they destroyed the material.
“It was just dumped here and we had to find places where we could spend the night,” he said.
Toto van der Merwe, a former attorney who tried to stop the evictions, said it was unconstitutional.
“They did not follow any of the provisions in the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act,” Van der Merwe said.
“They also created the conditions for the illegality [with the creation of the dumping site] and then evicted for the conditions for that illegality.
“My biggest gripe is that it cannot be right that when people do not have access to funding they do not have access to the law.
“Those people cannot afford a lawyer and often do not understand the terms communicated to them. It’s a crying shame.
“It’s an infringement of their constitutional rights.
“Why would you worry about 14 informal structures when municipal employees stay in houses right across from the same dumpsite,” he said.
He said he had reached out to human rights lawyers to see if the case against the municipality could be pursued.
For Lamani however, the evictions are about erasing their place in the history of Boknes.
“The poor are yet to realise this so-called freedom in SA because the benefits of this so-called democracy are only for those with money,” he said.
HeraldLIVE
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