Church stands firm over land rift
The rural town of Goedverwacht, 145km west of Cape Town is one of 11 Moravian mission stations in the Western Cape. And residents are in a legal battle with the church over land, and the meaning of ‘ownership’ in the context of a history of slavery and apartheid.
The Mail & Guardian reports that the precedent-setting battle goes to the heart of land reform and the rights of indigenous peoples SA.
The Moravian Church controls entire towns – mission stations – and hundreds of thousands of hectares of land.
It even has its own financial services and property management company, MCiSA Holdings. The church, which considers itself the owner of these small towns around the country and the surrounding agricultural land, where residents pay it taxes and levies, and live under its laws, has left many people dispossessed and disenfranchised.
Known formally as Unitas Fratrum or Unity of the Brethren, the Moravian Church is one of the oldest denominations of the Protestant Church, founded in 1457 in Bohemia in present-day Czechia.
The missionaries who came to SA as early as 1737 were German. The M&G notes that they welcomed people of all races to the church, and to live in safety in their mission stations at a time of genocide, forced evictions and displacement of people of colour by the colonial powers, and in direct opposition to the authorities’ dehumanisation of these peoples.
Almost three centuries later, the people who lived on the land, predominantly Khoi, want to control and govern the land their forefathers worked and which some have referred to as their birthright.
‘The Europeans got our land with three things: with the gun, with the Bible and with alcohol,’ said Naomi Julius, who was born in Goedverwacht and is now in her 60s.
In 1996, then Land Affairs Minister Derek Hanekom and the Moravian Church signed the Genadendal Accord, which was an agreement of co-operation between the department and the church in SA, a declaration of intent to address land reform and land tenure issues at mission stations.
However, there are no examples of the church aspiring to any of the actions in this document, and several examples of it reneging on them.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
