Hier is nog een van die swart boere wat na etlike jare se boerdery, huur van grond, nie antwoorde kry van die ANC regerings en amptenare om te hernu nie. Dit kom dus voor dat hierdie swart boere vir etlike jare daar boer en etlike jare daarna, kennisgewings kry om die plaas te ontruim. Word van hierdie swart boere ook aan die neus rondgelei? Is dit regtig net kwansuis name van plase wat verander het. Dit klink nie net verdag nie, maar dit kom ooreen met wat in Zimbabwe aan die gang is. Hoe kan sekere families in regeringskringe, sulke groot stukke grond besit?
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It is time that the government report on all farms and land bought since 1994 with TAX money and who is farming on that land?
Government (ANC and EFF) are quick to ring the bell on expropriation of land, but what about this land areas and also the old mines that never was rehabilitated at all. Most of those ugly mines were also productive farm land.
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Die ANC regering het oor die 5000 produktiewe plase opgekoop met belastinginkomstes vir grondhervorming. Waarom word dit nie uitgedeel nie, of is dit aan ander belanghebbendes uitgedeel soos Chinese? Wat van al die uitgediende myne wat nooit gerehabiliteer is nie, dit kon al lankal bruikbaar gemaak gewees het vir landbougrond.
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Indien swart boere plase of plaasgrond gekoop of opge-eis en verkry het, waarom wil die regering dit dan terugneem?
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Lulama Kapa, 66, and his wife Nothandekile, 63, are emerging black farmers from the Eastern Cape. In 1989, when the couple were in their early thirties, they started working for a white commercial farmer on portion 5 of Oribi Dale Farm 360 outside Ugie in the Eastern Cape. But for the past 10 years, they have been unable to get the government to transfer the lease into their names. Lulama Kapa has kept a file of all the letters he has sent and received from government departments during this time. It was ongoing for years.
Despite the fact that the Kapas have no formal lease, their farm on the state-owned land is flourishing. They grow mielies and livestock fodder, and own 87 cows and 305 sheep. They have built two small houses on the land and bought a bakkie and two tractors along with a plough, crop sprayer and ploughing tools. The couple is more than willing to lease the land, which would otherwise be lying barren, from the government.
Several years later, Lulama Kapa received a phone call from someone who identified himself only as Mr Nelani from Cape Town. The person said Kapa was squatting on his family’s ancestral land and that the Kapas must vacate the farm immediately.
The Nelani family is well known in the Mthatha area, but this is about 80km away from Farm 360. The mayor of the King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality, which encompasses Mthatha and Mqanduli, is Nyaniso Nelani.
A deeds search shows that Zoyisile William Nelani and Virginia Nobantu Nelani own land in the area, but not Farm 360. They bought portion 0 of Farm 373 in 2001. Zoyisile Nelani was an uMkhonto weSizwe struggle icon in the Eastern Cape who was arrested several times in the 1960s and 1970s before serving five years on Robben Island. He was an ANC councillor for a brief period after apartheid ended, before his death in 2014. The government still owns Farm 360, according to the deeds search.
Kapa spent three years fending off calls from Mr Nelani, who would not supply his first name. But then in 2018, Kapa began receiving letters from Mthatha attorney Mpumelelo Notununu instructing him to vacate the land, even though there had been no application for an eviction order.
“Nelani was farming some other land nearby for some time before making a claim to this farm.” Kapa suspects that after Zoyisile Nelani died, one of the Nelani family members took a liking to Kapa’s farm after seeing how productive it is and decided to grab it.
In 2019, the agriculture department suddenly told Kapa that Farm 360 had been sold and that the new owners had changed the farm’s name to 373. But when the department was shown the deeds search proving that the government still owns Farm 360, and that Nelani owns Farm 373, it changed its story and said the two plots of land had been mixed up and that Kapa was mistakenly farming 373 and not Farm 360.
The farms are completely different sizes, so it is difficult to understand how the government could have gotten them mixed up for 10 years. Zoyisile Nelani also farmed his land nearby from 2001 to 2014 without once mentioning to Kapa or the government anything about a mix-up.
The couple just want to be left alone to farm peacefully. They are good at farming and willing to move if the government offers them the chance to rent a bigger piece of state land on which they can expand their operations. “This farm is small. If there is an option of a bigger, equally fertile farm, I will take it,” said Lulama Kapa.
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23 August 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on President Cyril Ramaphosa to immediately release the final investigations reports by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) related to several land reform corruption cases.
In a response to a DA parliamentary question, the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola said that “it is the President’s prerogative to release SIU’s final reports” of the 6 cases and more than 260 people it investigated since 2011.
This morning reports emerged that a high-ranking ANC official in the Eastern Cape allegedly gave a wealthy businessman and friend a state farm as a ‘gift’ after the previous farmer was suddenly told he was occupying the land illegally. Vuyani Zigana lost the land near Kokstad where he had been farming since 2012. Due to this injustice he also had to sell most of his cattle to pay for the cost of the sheriff who held them for three months. And he has spent R80 000 pursuing the matter in court, only for officials from the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) to not show up at the appointed court dates.
This is another indication of how the ANC’s corruption and patronage is impeding land reform in South Africa.
While the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Thoko Didiza, have reportedly implemented an investigation, the DA questions whether those involved will ever be held to account.
Currently, the DA knows of three other cases where severe misconduct, if not outright corruption, have hampered emerging farmers from owning the land they have successfully farmed for years:
- Lulama Kapa and his wife Nothandekile has farmed Farm 360 in the Eastern Cape for 31 years – most of it without trouble. They have been struggling for 10 years to get the Government to transfer the lease to their name. And for the past three years, their livelihood has been under threat from an ANC-connected cadre that wants to steal the land with dubious claims that it has always belonged to his family;
- Thandi Moyo is struggling to get the lease of her father’s farm in Gauteng in her name. They worked on the farm since 2007 until he passed away in 2013. The farm was then leased to another man who has never worked on the farm, and only drives out to it on weekends; and
- In yet another case, Ivan Cloete has been forced by the Department to go through numerous beneficiary selection processes. This means that he has to start over on a new farm every few years even though he was promised that he would not be moved from the land he is currently leasing and has successfully farmed for a number of years in the Western Cape.
These cases show that the DALRRD is either incredibly mismanaged or incredibly corrupt.
Minister Didiza needs to step in immediately. Instead of blindly adopting poor thought-out policies, the Department should endeavor to apply the policies currently in place to ensure that black farmers leasing Government land and making a success of it are supported, not undermined when cadres become envious of their success.
A transparent database should be established where relevant information regarding the leasing of land should be easily accessible by members of the public.
Successful farmers should be given title deeds and not be forced to reapply for a new lease every few years. They cannot be forced to continue with the threat of removal perpetually hanging over their heads.
Come elections, Government will again make a lot of noise about expropriation without compensation and giving land to previously disenfranchised people. Those promises would be easier believed if they did not steal land from their own people to reward cadres and friends, and if the President published the SIU reports to see if justice has indeed been done.
In the meantime, those promises means nothing to the farmers wondering when they will be forced to bid all their hard work good-bye.
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ONAFHANKLIK 