Personal message

Our brave and beloved Constance Mogale needs our help.  She has advanced cervical cancer that has spread to her bones including her spine and pelvis. This has happened shockingly suddenly.  She was misdiagnosed initially. By the time the cancer was discovered it was too late for an operation. Her chemo and radiation treatment has been complicated by problems arising from her long-term diabetes and more recent kidney problems.  Constance is being treated by government hospitals and doctors as she does not have medical aid.  The oncology department at Baragwanath hospital has sent her home to be cared for by her family.

Her loving family have rallied around her, but they need financial support to get a wheelchair and to keep her mobile as she is currently bed-ridden. Proper nourishment and attending hospital visits costs money which the family is struggling to pull together. A hospice service to provide regular visits and pain relief as a back-up for her traumatized family members is urgently needed.  The family need counselling too, to cope with Constance’s sudden transition from the strong energetic leader we all know, to her current frailty.  We need to raise R150,000 which will be deposited into the account of her sister Maria Molapo who has taken unpaid leave and traveled from Cape Town to care for Constance.

The treacherous speed of the cancer’s spread, together with the initial wrong diagnosis has left Constance and the family reeling and unable to know how, and what, to communicate to the wider land rights community in which Constance has played such a pivotal role. I have known, admired, worked with, and loved Constance for almost 30 years. Some brief highlights of her heroic life are in order:

Constance started young.  She was already an activist in her teens when she participated in meetings called to resist the forced removal of her home - the Goedgevonden community in North West province. Her own experience of forced removals led her play an active role in the re-occupation of Goedgevonden in 1991 despite violent retaliation by neighbouring white farmers and police.   She went on to play a leadership role in the movement to re-occupy confiscated land, and then to lodge and pursue restitution claims after the Restitution Act was brought in with the change of government in 1994. She played a leadership role in the Land Access Movement of South Africa (LAMOSA) for many years, after which she worked for the National Movement of Rural Women. 

During these years she worked ceaselessly to support restitution communities and to oppose unjust laws such as the Communal Land Rights Act of 2004 and the Traditional Court’s Bill of 2008.  Her work entailed hundreds of thousands of community meetings, marches and petitions, as well as press engagements and endless funding applications and reports. Ultimately, she became the founding co-ordinator of the Alliance for Rural Democracy where she has played a pivotal role in bringing together the small and large rural organisations and communities who had come together to oppose the unjust laws and elitist policies of the post-apartheid government.  Tragically the promise of land reform that shone so brightly during the transition was soon betrayed by the new government which quickly sided with existing vested interests, be they those of large landowners or those of traditional leaders and new black elites.  Constance traveled tirelessly from province to province, vigil to vigil, protest to protest and has spear-headed important (and successful) legal challenges to the new laws and policies. Her name will go down in history as the lead applicant in two crucial cases challenging changes to the restitution process and to the controversial Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Act, both of which succeeded in the Constitutional Court. 

Just as we have been inspired by, reassured by, and led by Constance and her brave leadership during land rights campaigns, so we now need to rally around her in her time of illness and pain. All contributions are needed, however small. Every contribution carries a powerful message of love and support regardless of the amount contributed.  It is time for us to provide comfort and love to this tireless activist and warrior for land rights.

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