With nothing but dirt roads, house walls allegedly cracked by blasting at a nearby mine and dry taps, the people of Bapong, a village in North West, have yet to discover who stole more than half a billion rands in mining royalties from them, leaving them rich only on paper.
Five years after reporting the theft to the public protector's office, which launched an investigation, all the community has been given is promises.
Freddie Molefe, 75, who has lived in the area all his life, said he has yet to see the benefits of being one of the owners of the platinum-rich land. He and the rest of the community have no proper roads, and little drinkable water. Most of the people are poor and every facility they have - except for the post office and clinic - was built by the community.
He fears that he might die before finding out who stole their riches.
"We want to see them in jail and their ill-gotten gains returned to the community," said Molefe.
Another local, Peter Manganye, 58, said: "Who is benefiting from the riches because we are clearly not? You are rich but you have no water. We pay R50 a month for water to people who have boreholes but we are supposed to be billionaires.
"All these mines have brought is more suffering and division in a close-knit community. Those responsible for so much suffering must be named and paraded in public as thieves who stole from their own," he said.
On a visit to the community in March, Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane promised to release her final report into the pillaging of more than R600-million from the community's account, the "D-account", by the end of April. She has not kept her word.
It is not the first time that the community, which owns the land on which Lonmin and other platinum miners operate, has been left high and dry. Mkhwebane's predecessor, Thuli Madonsela, promised the community that her final report would be released in December 2016 or January 2017 at the latest.
The provisional findings of Madonsela, published in July last year, confirmed that the D-account had been emptied.
Madonsela told the community that the account was controlled by the North West government but was not held as a trust account. She said there was no oversight over the administration of the account.
She found that R80-million was spent on building a palace for tribal chief Emius Bob Mogale. The palace stands conspicuously on a large tract of land on the outskirts of the village, complete with security guards at the gate. Locals have dubbed the palace "Nkandla", after President Jacob Zuma's lavishly refurbished private homestead.
The people of Bapong settled near Brits in the 1920s on one of the richest platinum deposits in the world and started receiving royalties from four mining companies in 1979. The royalties were paid into a trust account. In 2009, the balance in the account was R400-million, but no development took place in the impoverished rural area about 60km outside Pretoria.
The community is also keen to know about the management of funds in its Bapo Ba Mogale Investments arm, which it established in 2014, and which has since done R1.7-billion of business with Lonmin.
Public Protector Mkhwebane intends issuing right-of-reply notices to those against whom she is considering making adverse findings. These include the North West provincial government and the Bapo Tribal Council.
The public protector's office yesterday told The Times that the notices "were submitted on time by the provincial investigation team that is leading the investigation, but needed to be reworked as part of our quality assurance processes".
"[Mkhwebane] understands that the matter has dragged on for far too long and that 'justice delayed is justice denied'. Some of the notices only just got served on parties.
"It is important to counterbalance the speed at which we deal with matters with rigour [so that we] have watertight reports and avoid [ a] judicial review."
Resident Sanah Motsumi, who survives by selling sorghum beer, said that, when her report was ready, "[the public protector] must bring the Hawks. Those thieves must face justice and pay for leaving us so rich but yet so poor.
"Those funds were meant for the community. Now my house has cracked because of the blasting from the mine, and the money paid by the mine was stolen."
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