The Ingonyama Trust says it has not been complicit in limiting women’s access to tribal land in KwaZulu-Natal.
This was stated by Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB) chairperson Jerome Ngwenya, who fielded questions from journalists during a Zoom engagement with the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday.
“The issue that there are women struggling for land… either it’s not there or they are referring to other places outside Ingonyama Trust land,” he said.
Ngwenya was responding to queries around facilitating access to farmland for women who are battling to obtain land administered by the trust.
She said after being discharged from hospital, Thulani and his son went to check on Ngubane at her home after receiving no help. They found Ngubane’s decomposing body in the dining room of her home.
“What they found was something no child or grandchild should have to deal with. Their experience [was] a gross violation of their mother’s/grandmother’s dignity, and their own cultural norms about respect.
“Sizani Ngubane was a remarkable woman who has left a void in her brainchild, the Rural Women’s Movement.
“Having been part of the National Women’s Coalition in the early 1990s, and having worked for the Association for Rural Advancement in Pietermaritzburg in the 1990s, she was determined to do something to empower the least empowered women of the province, those living in rural areas,” said De Haas.
RIP Sizani Ngubane: The cruel and lonely Covid-19 death of an exceptional woman
By Opinion
By Mary de Haas
Confirmation of the death of Sizani Ngubane, aged 74, on December 23, sent shock waves through her extensive South African and international networks of those who knew her dedication to, and unceasing work for, the rights of rural women through the Rural Womenâs Network.
However, when the announcement was made, she had been dead for days â perhaps even a week or more â having suffered a lonely, tormented Covid-19 death in her Hilton home.
Fingers are now being pointed at the provincial Department of Health and the local police for their failure to respond to the barrage of pleas from her son, Thulani, who had himself been hospitalised, seriously ill with Covid-19, to assist her.
A
T THE AGE of 74, with barely enough feet and inches to peer over the steering wheel, Sizani Ngubane makes for an unlikely racer. Yet one afternoon in October she hurtles up the
N2 motorway, which hugs the east coast of South Africa before heading inland through the heart of the former Zulu kingdom, swerving past trucks and errant cattle.
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Not for the first time, Ms Ngubane (pictured above) is on a mission. She and your frazzled correspondent arrive in the town of Jozini as the sun wanes behind hills dotted with fever trees. We are just in time to meet applicants in a court case co-led by Ms Ngubane’s organisation, the Rural Women’s Movement, that could strike a blow against one of the most controversial institutions in South Africa.
Africa: South Africa s Land and Women s Rights Activist Sizani Ngubane Dies allafrica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from allafrica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.