KNYSNA NEWS - About 50 local residents including members and elders of the Knysna KoiKoi held a cultural ritual on Sunday 28 July at gravesites near the Knysna River, some of which were identified earlier by elders.

The gravesites are on the "Suurvlakte", an area adjoining the Knysna River in the vicinity of Rheenendal.

Avril Terblanche, a chief and leader of the Knysna KoiKoi, and secretary of the Knysna KoiKoi and San Assembly Council, said the ritual started "just off the N2 at the Rheenendal turnoff, and we proceeded along that road, some of us on foot, but because of the wind we could not burn our cultural herbs along the way".

"We brought some of our churches, members of all the cultural houses in Knysna, members of the Rheenendal community, members of the Knysna KoiKoi and people who were evicted from the Suurvlakte, and we arrived outside one of the farms there.

"Some of us were each carrying a rock, to put at each of the gravesites, as something to remember us by.

"We needed to do this ritual cleansing because there was a lot of sadness there, and after that we needed to have a celebration there, on one of the farms."

Residents of Rheenendal had earlier told her, and elders of the House of Heritage, "about the graves, and how they were taken off their land in 1975, in the Suurvlakte".

She and elders had then gone to the Suurvlakte "and we came across a lot of graves on one farm".

One of the gravesites on the Suurvlakte.

"Two days later we searched for graves on other farms and we found a lot of graves there, on about five farms. You could see at most of the gravesites that the people were buried there in cultural ways.

"The graves were all in lines, and we came across two graves that were different from the rest on a farm, that could have been those of the leaders of the cultural people who were living on that farm.

"There was a grave on one of the farms, from 1889, and the grave wasn't looked after - a lot of trees had fallen on the grave, and trees had fallen on other graves in the area.

"Then we brought in (South African Human Rights Commission's) human rights commissioner Chris Nissen, and he went with us to one of the gravesites in the Suurvlakte.

"He said we must liaise with the provincial heritage office to get more information on the registration of the graves.

"We did that, and we found out the graves were not registered. The graves date from 1889, to 1934, to 1956."

Terblanche said for her the ritual had enabled participants to "break the chain of what has happened in the past", and had opened the way for "setting our vision and goal on the present, and asking for forgiveness, so that we can move forward".

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