Kumalosville, Kwa Zulu Natal

Kumalosville, near Ladysmith, in Natal, was one of the first "blackspots" to go. The Liberal Party booklet has this to say. "In January, 1908, a Mr Daniel Bester sold 250 acres of land to an African syndicate whose trustees were Chief J.H. Kumalo and Messrs. T. Kumalo and E. Lutango. Kumalosville was born. "In October, 1963, over 55 years later, the demolition squads of the Nationalist Government's Department of Bantu Administration moved in, and Kumalosville died. "Mr Matsheni Hlomuka, the only surviving member of the original syndicate still resident at Kumalosville in 1963, described how the farm was bought. How the people who were members of the syndicate came together at a meeting, each one having been told to bring £5 (R10) with him, and how each man put his money into one of a pair of enamel dishes, until both were full. With this money 250 acres were bought from Mr Bester. The great attraction was not only that this was freehold land but that it adjoined the railway line, something which no other African land in the area did. The 250 acres were surveyed into 2-acre plots. Allowing for roads there were 102 of these, of which, in recent times, 91 were in African ownership and 11 in the hands of Non-Africans.