When people are removed from their land to make way for a coal mine, how do you put a value on their ancestral connections, the springs that flow even in times of drought, the sweet summer grass, the trees which sheltered their goats from summer storms, the ground where their umbilical cords are buried, the view of the rolling hills that framed their childhoods, their clean air and fertile soil?
Two weeks ago, while chopping onions for her family's supper in her Ophondweni home, 63-year-old Fikile Ntshangase was gunned down by unknown assailants.
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