Moses ‘Moss’ Sekobane, a community activist and advice office volunteer on the West Rand, died following kidney failure at Leratong Hospital on the 17th of December 2023, aged 56. I met Ntate Moss in 2022, while based with Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR). Moss’ relationship with LHR long predated my own; he had been referring farm evictions to LHR since 1998. Democratic era laws, particularly the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA), protects farm workers and their families from arbitary eviction. In summary, long-term employees have the right to remain in their homes on farms or agricultural holdings, or be provided with an equivalent alternative. However, enforcing this in court requires lawyers, hence Moss’ referrals to LHR.
The West Rand (mostly in Gauteng province), where Moss was based, has fertile land with vegetable and flower farms requiring extensive labour. Mechanisation has, however, resulted in farmers cutting their permanent workforce and relying on casual, seasonal workers. Those leaving the farms typically move into crowded informal settlements; rural slums that pepper the area. Closer to the western reaches of Johannesburg in Muldersdrift, Lanseria and elsewhere there is a volatile amalgam of private housing developments for the new middle class, weekend getaways retreats, agricultural plots, and informal settlements: a cauldron of inequality.
The first of Moss’ referrals that I assisted him with was Tilly’s Farm in Muldersdrift. Tilly was the name of a previous owner; it was actually an agricultural plot of some nine hectares. From LHR’s Pretoria office it was unclear what was happening. That, I later realised, was because the situation was fluid and complex. A private developer wanted rid of the African occupants of Tilly’s farm in order to build luxury housing. One of several complications was that former employees of Mr Tilly had ESTA rights to remain in their homes, but there were also recent arrivals who had squatted on the land and who would have to be evicted using the Prevention of Illegal Eviction or PIE Act. The developer had employed lawyers specialising in evictions, but neither ESTA nor PIE was being followed. Rather, a mixture of threats, legal bluffs, and bribes were being employed.
I arranged to meet Moss in Randfontein. I parked the car and waited. It was a long wait. He was, I found out later, still in Jo’burg at the CCMA representing a group of summarily dismissed farm workers. When he finally arrived, it was getting dark.
We drove through loadshedded darkness on unfamiliar, potholed roads and met with the long-term residents in a dimly lit room of the old farm buildings. Moss introduced me and I took details of each family to establish their ESTA rights (which remain even if ownership of the land changes). But two weeks’ later the developer ignored LHR’s letters and, lying that they had a court order, demolished the residents’ homes. The residents camped out in the rubble while LHR went to court. Despite an order from the Land Claims Court in July 2022 that the developer must rebuild within three months what he had unlawfully demolished, the twelve families are now into their second year living in squalid temporary accommodation. Tilly’s Farm illustrates how the powerful can disregard the law. It also demonstrates that Moss was the West Rand go-to-person for the poor and marginalised facing adversity.
This was true for the three-generation Xaba family headed by a grandmother whose late husband had worked for a landowner who now wanted to sell his property, but without the family resident he would get a better price. The Xabas turned to Moss and Moss turned to LHR when the owner brought eviction proceedings in the Krugersdorp Magistrate’s court.
The owner claimed that he was offering the Xaba family equivalent alternative accommodation. His affidavit stated that this was a stand and structure with running water and electricity. The site, he alleged, was approved by an official of the Department of Land Affairs. Moss and I drove to the Dairy Farm informal settlement to check. There was no electricity and water came from a JoJo tank filled by the municipality. The dirt roads were in terrible condition (it was impossible to get my car to the stand), rubbish was strewn in the surrounding veldt and a gas pipeline ran a few meters away. As for the stand itself, there was another family living on it, allocated they told us by the councillor. All they knew about the stand being for the Xaba family was that some white men had come and erected a mokhukhu next to theirs. This flimsy structure measured three meters by four and was to accommodate the grandmother, her two daughters and four grandchildren.
After the magistrate dismissed the case, the owner abandoned legality. A carload of nkabis arrived at the plot brandishing guns along with a bakkie load of day labours who proceeded to smash out the doors and windows of Xaba’s home with crowbars.
Then there is the Ingwenya Community. I was on the summit of a mountain in the eastern Free State when Moss called. He had members of the community crowded into the advice office he ran from his small flat in the Affri Village social housing complex outside Randfontein. They were previous workers still living on the site of a bankrupt country hotel and spa complex. There was a new owner who wanted them off. Men in unmarked black uniforms with guns and batons had arrived the previous day kicking open doors and shouting for them to leave. Moss put his phone on speaker, and I explained eviction law. Moss could have told them just as well, but having someone else say it gave them confidence. It was also a way to bring me and LHR on board. LHR’s resources are limited, and we could not always assist when Moss asked for help.
Once I was back from the Free State, we audited the families to establish their ESTA rights. The community on their own initiative had obtained an interim harassment order against the new owner. Moss and I spend a morning training them on magistrate’s court procedure for their return date. In the end, the interim order and LHR’s letters served the purpose as the harassment stopped. But the future of the community has not been secured. LHR offered to negotiate, but this has been ignored and we wait for the owner’s next move.
Moss’ advice office was supported by the Rural Legal Trust, that later became the Centre for Advice and Training, but it was a limited budget and Moss paid his own bills by working as a night shift cleaner at a Randfontein Mall over weekends. He couldn’t afford a car so our fieldwork would start with me picking him up from Affri Village. This added considerable to the day’s kilometres. It would have been easier all round if he had a car, but then we would not have spent nearly so much time together, nor had the conversations that we did.
We talked about our ongoing cases and others we were involved with separately. We talked about inequality and land hunger. I was intrigued by his membership of the Democratic Alliance (DA). He was the deputy chair of the local branch and hoped to stand as a DA councillor. If the DA is viewed as a party for whites run by whites, then this is paradoxical. In the three cases described, Moss was defending Africans from eviction from their homes by white men and their hired lawyers.
However, this is not so strange if you think of the DA as two parties: the national party structure largely controlled by white men and women (particularly since its post 2019 election shake down), and a township membership with grassroots leaders who are socially conservative, believe in the rule of law, belong to a church, and are entrepreneurially minded. They need no instruction as to the injustices of South Africa’s social order since they live within it. They also see the chaos that has become South Africa and resent the ANC as a patronage network that excludes others unless, as a woman who Moss was assisting in Diepsloot Township put it, ‘you’re one of the councillor’s girlfriends.’
Moss was of the township DA. At his funeral, members of his branch, all Africans, came to pay their last respects in party T-shirts. Moss fitted the township DA profile, except that his entrepreneurship was one hundred percent committed to assisting vulnerable members of our society; particularly farm workers paid at the minimum wage (and not always that) and those being forced from their homes. He was disgusted with the corruption and incompetence of the state which he came across, particularly at the municipal level.
At Brickvale, Moss was up against Mogale City Municipality that wanted families to move off the site which had been bought for a housing development of mega proportions. Brickvale, a 130-hectare farm was the site of a brickworks established in the 1960s but now long-closed. Past employees, some now in their seventies and eighties live with their families in the old brickwork buildings and hostels where there is space for vegetable gardens. Never mind the corruption that mires this mega project, never mind the dystopian plan to re-house thousands of families from informal settlements into tiny ‘kappa’ houses far from employment opportunities, the municipality wanted this inconvenience out the way.
The dirty work of intimidating was carried out from the bottom of the municipal patronage structures; the councillor’s ward committee members cajoled and threaten those who did not want to relocate. The councillor refused to meet with us, he referred us to the municipal manager, who proceeded to ignored us.
Moss laboured in a world where betrayal is commonplace. Poor communities struggle to unite, even in the face of an external threat. Moss and I assisted with elections for the Brickvale community committee and spent one Saturday training them on committee principles and procedures. A key member of the committee was promptly co-opted by the councillor and took over pressurising residents to leave.
Despite obstacles, delays, frustrations, and setbacks Moss never stopped. I worked with him on half a dozen cases, but he had many more. Some we talked about, others I only heard about at his funeral. Along with members of the Brickvale, Ingwenya, and Tilly’s Farm communities they came to pay their last respects to this quiet lion of a man.
I learned much from Moss. I came to understand just how limited South Africa’s legal system is for those without money. How it is bypassed and defied by the powerful. How hired lawyers bluff those without legal knowledge, and drag out proceedings against less well-resourced opponents. But it is not only lawfare that is employed, so too is intimidation and violence. Often, as with the cases Moss and I worked on together, it is a dirty cocktail.
Conflict over land on the West Rand is multi-dimensional, but always pits the privileged against the poor. It reflects South Africa’s gross inequalities, that all too often we normalise and accept. Neither progressive laws nor pro bono legal assistance will bring justice while this inequality remains.
Moss understood this well, yet continued, always hopeful that some good could be achieved. He will be sorely missed by family, friends, church, DA branch, comrades, and the many that he assisted. This tribute, incomplete as it is, pays homage to a great man.
Robala ka kagiso ntate!
A version of this tribute to Moss was published in GroundUp: https://groundup.org.za/article/a-quiet-lion-a-tribute-to-land-activist-moss-sekobane/
