I have argued that dispossession is a continuous experience forcommunities who live in mined areas and that it includes theexperience of the living and the treatment of the remains of thosewho have passed. Thinking about dispossession in relation to boththe living and the deceased reminds me of Sol T. Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa, in which herecounts the Natives Land Act 27 of 1913, how the law revokednatives’ citizenship and, in the end, made them pariahs, with noproperty or even a place to bury their deceased. His work isimportant in tying together questions of land, nativeness,spirituality and belonging. Therefore, if we apply the same lens heused to analyse South Africa, a pertinent question arises: how arethe descendants of native Africans now citizens, without access tothe land and a place to rest? And what compels us to raise questionsabout landownership, belonging, heritage, land and cultural rights,dehumanisation and exclusion 30 years after South Africa'sdemocracy?

Gaps in the legislation that have been discussed – such as theMineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002 (MPRDA),the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996(IPILRA) and the National Heritage Resources Act 25 of 1999 (NHRA) –rob communities of their rights to access the land and places ofburial and allow the dispossession and dehumanisation of Africancommunities within the parameters of the law. This is lawfulexclusion. Lawful exclusion is, therefore, posited as the means bywhich African communities in mined areas are continuouslymarginalised through ‘reformed laws’ of the current democraticdispensation. The precise workings of lawful exclusion have beenexplicated in detail in the analysis presented around the processesof household and grave relocations wherein, notably, a cleardisregard of the provisions in the mineral, land and heritage laws,and gaps in the legislation, deny communities their rights.

In addition, the laws are also shown to intersect in ways that arecontradictory, operating within an overriding market-drivenrationale and, therefore, failing to attain their objectives toprotect ‘previously marginalised communities’.