Mabuza engages North West traditional leaders on service delivery and land reform

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Traditional and Khoi-San leaders in the North West province have bemoaned government’s slow implementation of resolutions to advance the interests of traditional communities in the province.

They shared these sentiments at a meeting with Deputy President David Mabuza as the chairperson of the Inter-Ministerial Task Team, established to respond to issues raised by traditional and Khoi-San leaders.

Traditional leaders gathered under one roof to share challenges facing their communities and put issues facing traditional communities into perspective.

Traditional leaders raised issues of service delivery and land reform.

“We need to engage with mayors and come up with a dashboard from which as traditional leaders we can engage municipalities to make progress in our communities.”

“The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform is dragging its feet to resolve the land claims.”

“My concern is about the illegal immigrants, illegal foreigners in our country. they have taken over.”

The Provincial House of Traditional and Khoi-San Leaders says many of these challenges have been longstanding with no immediate solutions in place.

Kgosi Thari Maotwe elaborates, “As the province of the North West we still have to develop our provincial act and its regulations aligned to the TKLA. The same with the customary initiation act, the province needs to align the North West initiation matters bill. The amendment of section 81 of municipal systems act. Dikgosi took a resolution regarding that amendment of not participating in municipal council and committees because such section is denying a number of Magosi from to participate in those councils.”

Mabuza says the report on governments coordinated response towards addressing matters raised by traditional and Khoisan leaders will have to make drastic strides to provide tangible solutions, timeframes and progress reports.

“We have categorised all the issues, they are many. Almost 20 or 20 something issues that were listed. We have grouped them into work streams. So the report must move from the issues to the workstream. Then from the work streams we must say these are the departments that are responsible.”

Meanwhile, North West Premier Bushy Maape together with the National Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, as well as the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, will meet again with traditional and Khoi-San leaders next Friday.