No development is worth destroying a people’s heritage

As South Africans prepare to celebrate Heritage Day, the VhaVenda people are fighting to protect something far more profound than landmarks or artefacts.

They are fighting for the survival of a living heritage. Yet this heritage stands in the path of the proposed Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ), a mega-industrial project that threatens to transform one of South Africa’s most culturally significant landscapes.

The question is whether development can be justified when it comes at the cost of a people’s identity, history and constitutional right to exist as a cultural community.

Heritage is everything we inherit from those who came before us. It shapes who we are today and what we pass on to future generations.

For the VhaVenda community, heritage is walked. It is sung. It is buried. Sacred sites in Limpopo province like the Soutpansberg mountains and Hanglip carry messages from our ancestors. The ancient baobab trees have been meeting places for centuries and landmarks that keep stories told by our ancestors. Sacred forests, such as Thathe Vondo and Phiphidi, are living classrooms where initiation takes place and knowledge gets passed down. The vegetation, medicinal plants and rivers are a pharmacy. They are a prayer site. They are history.

Our sacred sites, forests, vegetation, rivers and medicinal plants are under threat by the MMSEZ,a 60km2 heavy industrial hub in Limpopo’s Vhembe district, backed by the South African government and Chinese investors. It is planned around metallurgy, energy and manufacturing and includes about 10 open-cast coal mines to feed it.

To construct the hub, more than 120 000 hectares of indigenous vegetation will be cleared inside the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve. More than 600 000 protected trees that have existed for centuries are at risk.

The cost of the zone is being paid by the blood of our heritage.

The VhaVenda chief informed me that the community has rejected the project. The chief says the communities have not been properly consulted.

Despite repeated objections, the machines are moving. The law is being ignored.

Section 30 of the Constitution provides everyone with the right to participate in the culture of their choice, while section 31 protects the right to enjoy their culture and maintain their cultural sites.

To give effect to the rights, the law demands “meaningful public participation”.

The National Environmental Management Act requires a proper consultation process before vegetation is cleared.

That has not happened. The Centre for Environmental Rights has lodged an appeal on behalf of Dzomo La Mupo against the environmental authorisation (EA) granted for kinetic energy development in the MMSEZ footprint.

An open democracy means people must participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives, their land and their future. For the VhaVenda people, that right is being denied.

If we allow the MMSEZ to destroy the Soutpansberg, the baobabs and the sacred forests of Thathe Vondo and Phiphidi, we are not just losing trees; we are losing a way of being African. We are losing our roots.

•Seabi is a candidate attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights