'The Richest Tribe in Africa': Platinum-Mining and the Bafokeng in South Africa's North West Province, 1965-1999*

Abstract

The Bafokeng are a Setswana-speaking community long settled near present-day Rustenburg. This article focuses on their protracted legal battle with Impala Platinum in recent times to improve their royalties. It also analyses the interconnection of this struggle in the 1980s with the political consequences of Bafokeng incorporation into the apartheid 'homeland' of Bophuthatswana under Mangope. The injustices of the Mangope era endured by the Bafokeng are detailed extensively here. Subsequent Bafokeng court action against the powerful mining conglomerates made legal history. The final outcome in 1999, very favourable to the Bafokeng, changed forever the relationship between mineral owners and holders of mining rights in South Africa.