The eviction of farmers from their profitable farming enterprises by “rogue officials” of the department of agriculture, rural development & land reform has resulted in claims of more than R2bn being instituted against the department, according to the 2019/2020 report of the auditor-general.
Farmers who have lost hundreds of thousands of rand as a result of the evictions told Business Day the “dubious eviction orders” go against the government’s plans to release 700,000ha of state land on 30-year leaseholds to black farmers. The 700,000ha is land acquired by the former SA government for the consolidation of the homelands and which, after 1994, remained in the hands of the central government.
In November 2020, agriculture, land reform & rural development minister Thoko Didiza assured occupants of state-owned farms earmarked for land reform that it was not the government’s intention to evict them but to assist them by giving them occupation rights.
However, the eviction of farmers has raised fears in the sector that the government is going against its word.
Agriculture is considered one of the beacons of the economy, contributing about 3% to GDP, and is responsible for about 900,000 jobs.
Rosalie Kingwill, a research associate and land expert at the University of the Western Cape’s Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, told Business Day that the evictions are all “part of the pattern” relating to the department advertising state land for leasing and then having “no system for considering the rights of the current occupiers and lessees”.
This leaves room for “potential abuse of power and corruption. It’s a reflection of weak land governance and broken land administration,” she said.
“You have to have a system of adjudication outside of the courts that can weigh up the respective rights of each set of claimants and follow a predictable and legal administrative and corruption-proof procedure to arrive at who should be awarded the land. We have no such thing, so conflicts snowball and become highly politicised,” she said.
“The courts should be the last resort when conflicts cannot be resolved through administrative processes, but since our administrative processes are non-existent, the courts become the first resort. This may solve some issues of law, but in some cases the judgments may not be enforced or they may not have lasting or widescale impact.”
The evictions spurred DA agriculture, rural development & land reform spokesperson Annette Steyn to call for a moratorium. “It is worth noting that some of these land dispute claims stem from the chaotic land administration system that the department presides over,” she said.
One of those affected is Ivan Cloete, who has been a pig farmer since 2003 and was awarded the “entrepreneur of the year award” for small, medium and micro enterprises in the agricultural sector in 2012.
He told Business Day he was allocated Bellevue farm in Paarl in 2012. He said he was intimidated and harassed by departmental officials and prevented from farming pigs because Bellevue was a chicken farm. Cloete said he was moved to Gelukwaarts farm in Porterville in 2018.
“Despite the traumatic experiences, emotional and financial abuse on Bellevue farm [by the department], my family and I moved to Gelukwaarts farm ... with high expectations. This was short-lived. Shortly after the move another farmer informed me that she had a 10-year lease agreement for the same farm entered into with the previous owner that only expires in 2027. She emphasised that Gelukwaarts farm is ‘her farm’.”
Cloete said he signed a 30-year lease agreement with the department for Gelukwaarts in March 2019. But it was later recommended that he should be taken off the farm and allocated another one by the department.
He said he had already entered into an agreement with a butchery to buy all his slaughter pigs and “due to the fact that I was prevented to farm on Gelukwaarts farm, I was robbed of a very lucrative farming business opportunity”.
In April 2019 Cloete was moved to Colenso farm in Darling with an understanding that “my 30-year lease agreement for Gelukwaarts farm will be cancelled and a new 30-year lease agreement for Colenso will be issued — a transfer process”.
It had been resolved that he will not take part in another beneficiary selection process on the basis of “settling a dispute”.
The department “did not honour these undertakings/ commitments and my farm was advertised in July 2020 as a vacant farm and without my knowledge”, he said.
On February 2 he received a letter from the department that he should hand over all the keys of Colenso farm within seven days or face legal action, Cloete said. The matter is now being handled by his lawyer.
Another farmer who has been affected is Vuyani Zigana, who was evicted from his 745ha Nooitgedacht farm in Kokstad, KwaZulu-Natal, in December 2019. He told Business Day that he was moved to a 847ha farm in Underberg, more than 100km away, where he now runs a mixed farming operation.
“The eviction affected me badly. My blood pressure shot up and some of my livestock died. I lost about R200,000. I was told that I’m being placed on this new farm as a caretaker ... I’m fighting to have this farm given to me officially,” he said.
He queried why the government was evicting people while it had a programme to release state-owned land to farmers.
“It’s not surprising, because the government says one thing and then turns around and does the complete opposite.”
Steyn said Didiza needed to explain to farmers why she had failed to issue a moratorium on farm evictions pending the conclusion of investigations into why the evictions were issued in the first place; why evictions were issued against productive farmers if no alternative resettlement was available; and why new applicants for land were being allocated occupied farms instead of vacant state land.
Steyn accused “rogue department officials” of wreaking havoc through “nefarious eviction orders”.
Didiza’s spokesperson, Reggie Ngcobo, said the department had no programme to evict farmers “unless they have illegally occupied or invaded the land”. He said the department would not be involved with illegal removal of farmers.
But Ngcobo admitted that Zigana was evicted from the Nooitgedacht farm because the “land was advertised ... and allocated to someone else”.
He said ill-disciplined officials who may be “conducting illegal acts, including evictions of farmers, have to face the appropriate disciplinary measures”.
Ngcobo said more than 220,000 applications had been approved for allocation in the 700,000ha programme.
On Friday, Steyn announced that the department had decided to “withdraw its unlawful eviction order” against Cloete and restore his full farming rights to the Colenso farm. On Saturday, Cloete said that being allocated the farm finally was a “major victory for land reform”.
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