Word: doornkop
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Dates: during 1994-1994
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...frayed tent nearby read Ra Boile Gae in Pedi, a language spoken in the north of the country, and Home Sweet Home in English. Pedis are the largest of the northern Sotho groups, and these jubilant returnees were members of a community that had lived and farmed there in Doornkop for more than 70 years. They tilled the fertile soil and earned renown for the juicy peaches they sold. In 1974 their homes, schools and churches were bulldozed by the National Party government, and they were driven into the wilderness, victims of the country's apartheid laws, which reserved...
Hopeful as such experiments are, the struggle of the Pedi people of Doornkop is more typical. As early as 1964, the white government was pressing them to move to their designated homeland of Lebowa. When the last holdouts were forcibly ejected by police 20 years ago, the government took over the orchards of Doornkop as a training ground for riot squads. The Pedi owners received compensation of about $10 each...
Aided by human-rights organizations, in 1989 the Pedis began legal action to reclaim their land. Mandela's government broke through years of wrangling, and early this month the first Doornkop families returned to their traditional home. More are going back every day, and Kalushi Kalushi, who is in charge of homecoming arrangements, predicts they will number 20,000 by early next year. He also expects the settlement to have electricity by then. "You can't believe what it was like to come home," says Kalushi, a librarian at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. "When we stood under...
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