NKUZI DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION

General information

Nkuzi was established in 1997 as a section 21 company by Cde Marc Wegerif, an activist then based in the greater Elim area. Its first office was in Akanani centre in Shirley village. The objective was to assist marginalized communities to assert their land rights. It was established against the backdrop of an emerging democracy where more than 80 percent of the country’s surface (land) was in the hands of about 5 percent of the population.

To be mildly blunt, it was in the hands of a settler colonial white minority that has benefited immensely from apartheid. The new democratic government had committed itself to a land reform programme that would address this racially skewed pattern of land ownership and usher in a new order where land would primarily "belong to those who work it". I was within this context that NKUZI was established.