Word: mamatola
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Ever since Boer President "Oom Paul" Kruger first set them up on the slopes of the Wolkberg in 1883, the Mamatola tribesmen of the northeastern Transvaal have cultivated their sunny and windswept land in peace and contentment. Last week a convoy of 23 trucks dispatched by South Africa's Native Affairs Minister Hendrik Verwoerd rumbled up the mountain to carry the 1,200-odd Mamatola off to a new home, Metz, in a dank and inhospitable valley 30 miles to the east. The stated reason: the Mamatola's outmoded farming methods were ruining the land...
...South Africa, a whole tribe cannot be uprooted without due process of law. Faced with such tedious proceedings, Minister Verwoerd let it be known that the 410 families of the tribe were themselves quite ready and willing to go. But when Verwoerd's trucks arrived last week, the Mamatola refused to budge. Standing barefoot in a faded green sweater among his councilors, the aging chief of the tribe gazed about him helplessly. "The government tells me I must move," he said, "but my people want to stay on in their mountain home. Let them take away our plows...
...midday almost the entire Mamatola tribe were squatting stubbornly on their hillside, refusing to climb aboard the government trucks; Verwoerd's officials stood helplessly by wondering what to do next. At one point, the bemused old tribal chieftain reached out his hand to accept the $75 offered him as compensation for his land, but a crowd of Mamatola women screamed "Coward!" at him. The chief returned the money and sat down moodily on a kitchen chair on the mountainside. When at last the sun dipped down behind the mountains, there was nothing the government men could do but climb...
Next day, with a lawyer on hand to advise them, the Mamatola elders held a brief council meeting and told the government men firmly: "We won't go." But their victory, if such it was, was certain to be short-lived. "The transfer of the tribe to Metz," said an official announcement from the government at Pretoria that night, "has been abandoned for the time being, but we are determined to move the Mamatola out in the shortest possible time...
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