A black commercial farmer in the Free State claims to have been sabotaged by some of his white counterparts, writes Ann Eveleth
The vultures started descending on Isaac Khumalo’s Vredefort farm soon after he took the plunge into commercial agriculture in December 1995.
Thirty-one-year-old Khumalo, the Free State vice-chair of the Emerging Red Meat Producers Association, faces bankruptcy less than three years after he borrowed R300 000 – most of it from the now defunct Agricultural Credit Board (ACB) – to purchase the 71ha dairy farm, Geluk Plaas, in the Free State.
One of a handful of black commercial farmers who have opted to go it alone in a province dominated by white farmers and mass-based black land-reform projects, Khumalo says the writing was on the wall even as he took possession of the farm.
“Maybe 80% of the farmers in Vredefort are good people, but the rest are very bad. The white farmers don’t want to see a black commercial farmer succeed. The African National Congress only cares about group farmers because they bring more votes. And the Free State Department of Agriculture is still full of the old guard,” said Khumalo.
His troubles began almost immediately after he bought the farm from Thys de Wit, a man described by his white peers as “a staunch Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging supporter who couldn’t farm”.
“In March 1996, my cows started dying. De Wit had inseminated most of them with Brahman bull [sperm] and most of them died giving birth,” said Khumalo, pointing to a lone survivor of the pregnancy whose curved spine is still dislocated.
Within a few weeks, 35 of the 42 dairy cows purchased with the farm had died.
A Free State Department of Agriculture official, who declined to be named, said: “Dairy cows are not strong enough to give birth to a bull as big as a Brahman. If you take a seed out of an elephant and plant it in a human, that human is going to die. But De Wit knew what he was doing. When cows are just pregnant, they look so shiny and beautiful, but you can’t tell what’s inside them.”
Khumalo says De Wit’s treachery did not stop there. “After I bought the farm he started taking things that were part of the contract and selling them. I complained to my extension officer, Andries Kotze, but he told me I should be happy De Wit didn’t sell the farm out from under me.”
Khumalo has had enough of extension officers. “When you borrow money from the ACB, you have to sign an agreement that you will use the extension officers. This means you can’t do anything without them. But especially in the Free State, if you are a black commercial farmer, you don’t get any help from them.
“By the time five cows had died I suspected that the rest were also pregnant with Brahman. I wanted to sell them to a butcher before I lost everything, but Kotze told me no.
“In 1996 I planted 10 000 tomatoes in a field, but it rained and they all washed away. I kept asking Kotze to let me put in a drainage system, but he never came. I kept begging one chap who was working with him, Schalk Burger, until he told me he’s not working on a kaffir’s farm.
“When I went to ask the credit board for more money to buy 40 new cows, they told me I must start paying back my initial loan first. How am I supposed to pay that loan when I don’t have enough cows to make the money?”
Appeals to regional extension official Chaka Ntsane and Free State MEC for Agriculture Cas Human also fell on deaf ears, says Khumalo.
Khumalo’s table overflows with correspondence he has sent to and received from former Free State premier Patrick “Terror” Lekota, his successor, Ivy Matsepe-Cassaburi, Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Derek Hanekom, President Nelson Mandela and others who have promised to pass his problem on to the relevant person. Nobody has yet come forward with a solution, except for Khumalo’s new extension officer, Hennie Coetzee, and an unidentified man.
“In December 1997, Coetzee told me I must sell the farm and go into the townships. He said he would organise that I get a R15 000 grant to sell milk in the township. I told him I don’t want that R15 000.
“In August, a man came here. He never told me his name, just said: `I’m somebody who’s going to help you.’ I asked him how he found me and he showed me a copy of a letter I got from [Director General of Agriculture] Bongi Njobe-Mbuli. He pulled out his briefcase and it was full of stacks of R50 notes. He said here’s R400 000 if I leave the farm and if I just go to the township. Since then I’ve had at least 35 people coming to say they’ve heard I want to sell the farm.”
Khumalo is struggling to make ends meet. His family lives off the proceeds of whatever vegetables he can afford to plant and relatives help pay the electricity bill. A series of incidents he blames on “sabotage” have also cost him dearly. A R2 500 borehole pump went missing, and robbers stole 120 litres of milk from the dairy.
But most of the incidents have not involved theft. Broken fences, a cut borehole wire, sugar in the tractor tank. The list is endless. He fired five workers after catching them doing some of this. “They said they did it because they were paid,” he claimed.
Khumalo declined to name the Vredefort farmers he believes are behind the sabotage, saying: “I’m not giving up. I still want to live here and this is a small town.”
But his determination may not be enough to keep him in business. A May 15 letter from the Department of Agriculture says he must pay R90 250 in overdue loan payments by the end of the year. With only seven cows left, a R6 000 overdraft and no sign of state assistance on the horizon, Khumalo fears he may yet fulfil the dreams of white farmers.
Neither Human nor Coetzee had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. But Ntsane said he was unaware of the death of Khumalo’s cows. He said Khumalo told him he simply needed operating capital to feed the animals. Ntsane said his extension officers were “the most positive in this region” and he didn’t believe the allegations Khumalo made against them.
“The problem doesn’t start with my attitude or that of my extension officers. It lies with the financial institutions. The support systems for emerging farmers were not in place at the time Khumalo bought his farm. Clearly what happened was undercapitalisation of the whole venture,” he said.