Land: The chickens come home to roost

The residents of Borolong and Chadibe have crossed swords for years over the rights to a piece of land between the two villages. The festering wounds have contaminated relations between the two and Borolong parents now refuse to let their children inter-mingle with their peers in Chadibe.

This is despite the fact that Borolong Primary School is over-capacity, with pupils learning in tents and under trees. Parents there will not transfer or enrol their children in Chadibe, a few kilometres away, even though the primary school there has ample space. Today, the area MP is also at his wits’ end after years of futile appeals. The issue highlights the potential fall-out of policymakers’ failure to deal with the troubles of land in the country. Few and far between have been land allocation exercises free of stampedes, confusion or even physical confrontation between landseekers and law enforcement.