A mega-development is encroaching on a small graveyard in Johannesburg, threatening generations of history

Generations of Rebecca Kaoa’s family – her great-grandmothers, grandparents, parents and siblings – are all buried on a hillside in Riversands, north of Johannesburg. 

Their burial site is now hemmed in by the construction of a mega-development that broke ground in December 2024. Kaoa complains that she was not informed nor consulted by the government or the developers about their plans for the gravesite. She also accuses the developers of having already disturbed several graves.

“GG” is an acronym for “Government Garage” – the letters on the number plates of the trucks the apartheid government used to carry out forced removals.

“We had the best life, I promise you. The best, best life,” Kaoa said as she looked out into the distance, at the place where her childhood home once stood.

“We used to farm watermelons, potatoes and mielies. We kept cows, sheep, pigs and turkeys.

“It was home,” she recalled.  

“Home” was her family’s farm on what is now part of Diepsloot township, north of Johannesburg. She was born in 1942, the eldest of seven siblings, and lived with about 24 extended family members in a large compound on the farm.

Kaoa’s entire life changed in 1960 when, under the Group Areas Act, they were forcibly removed.

“They just came and said the land now belongs to the government. We had a month to sell our livestock and pack up everything before the GG trucks took us away,” she said.

“GG” is an acronym for “Government Garage” – the letters on the number plates of the trucks the apartheid government used to carry out forced removals.

Kaoa said that it was in the early 1990s that the first squatters erected informal housing on the land, the beginning of what would later become Diepsloot township, now home to 350,000 people.

Broken promises

The graveyard, which overlooks Diepsloot from across Winnie Mandela Drive, holds generations of Morige families.

Some graves have headstones, others are marked only by rocks. The oldest headstones date back to the 1800s, testament to the family’s deep roots in the area. Newer graves are dated between 2020 and 2023.

“My mother was born on this land in 1914. She’s here. You’ll see her. My Gogo was born here in 18-something. She’s here too,” said Morige, as she took the Our City News team on a tour of the grave site.

Kaoa walks amongst rows of graves with the surnames Morige (her father’s family) and Lebethe (her mother’s family), all laid next to each other. Her mother and father Dorah and Thomas share a grave. Her great grandmothers are next to each other in the row above them. Her four siblings – Francina, Sophie, Nicholas, Melita and Maria – are all side by side at their parents’ feet.

Home for the living

The only thing separating the cemetery from the rest of the construction site is a fence of plastic barrier netting that flaps in the wind. Engines rumble loudly and dust billows as trucks and heavy machinery zoom up and down past the tombstones, excavating heaps of earth mere steps away.

When work is complete, the site will be transformed into Riverside View, a flagship joint venture between private property developer Valumax and the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements. Riverside View is a mega-development of more than 10,000 mixed-income housing units. 

No matter where Kaoa and her family members ended up over the decades, the graveyard was always a place for them to reunite. Either for funerals or for connecting with their ancestors.

“Every Spring, we’d come here to clean our graves and cut the grass,” said Kaoa.

Filing a land claim

After the land claims process opened in the nineties, Kaoa travelled to Pretoria to file a claim for their land.

“I said I don’t want money. I just need the graves to be left like that. And please just make them nicely [sic], close them in, so that every time we want to come to the ancestors, we can come through,” she said. 

The pensioner showed OCN letters dating back to 1996 that she’d written to various government departments, including the Public Protector. 

It was other land claimants still living in Diepsloot who noticed construction in the vicinity of the graves at the end of 2024, and alerted her.

Some community members attended stakeholder consultations with Valumax, where they say they were told that the graves would be handled properly, but were unclear about the developer’s plans for them.

Philemon Mahlangu, who also grew up on the Diepsloot farms and was forcibly removed, was at the meeting.

“They said they are aware that there are graves and when we asked what’s going to happen, they said they were going to enclose them nicely, but do you see what’s happening here?” Mahlangu gestured at the construction site that encircled the graves.

Mahlangu says that after the initial stakeholder meeting with Valumax, there was no further communication about what would happen to the graves.

On a visit to the site in August 2025, both Kaoa and Mahlangu expressed alarm at how much smaller the graveyard appeared than the previous time they’d visited. They pointed to piles of rocks just outside the perimeter fence as evidence of graves that had already been cleared.

However, Helgardt Slabbert, Project Manager at Valumax, denies that any graves onsite have been disturbed. 

“When acquiring land for development, we conduct thorough due diligence, including the appointment of a qualified heritage specialist to carry out a Heritage Impact Assessment. Should any graves be identified, they are carefully documented and incorporated into public open spaces to ensure their protection,” he said.

Slabbert said Valumax was in communication with several families connected to the graves, and had informed them of their plans to “respectfully preserve the graves in their original location”.

“We are currently in the process of installing a permanent enclosure – a wall or fence with a lockable access gate – to safeguard the graves. Once completed, the access keys will be handed over to the local Ward Councillor of Ward 113,” said Slabbert.

While standing over her mother’s grave, tears come to Kaoa’s eyes. “I still love my mom and dad very much. My grannies too. That’s why I’ve been fighting for these graves for 30 years,” she said.

What the law says

The 1999 National Heritage Resources Act mandates developers to conduct Heritage Impact Assessments (HIA) on proposed development areas. 

Ngqabutho Madida, Manager of Burial Grounds and Graves at the South African Heritage Resources Agency, says their records show an HIA was done on a site called Riverside View Extension 84, which received approval for development in 2020. The HIA on record did not identify any graves. DM

This article is produced by Our City News, a non-profit newsroom that serves the people of Johannesburg.