Parks board chair Enos Mabuza is being investigated for a farm which he bought for R6 000 and mortgaged for almost R500 000, reports Justin Arenstein
RESPECTED National Parks Board chairman and former homeland leader Dr Enos Mabuza bought a farm for R6 000 from the government under allegedly irregular conditions in 1991, and mortgaged it for almost R500 000 two years later.
Agricultural economists, however, put the farm’s true market value even higher, pointing out that banks always keep a 35% reserve on mortgages to protect themselves. Mabuza’s 19ha farm and three other farms sold to former KaNgwane politicians in 1991 are currently being investigated by Mpumalanga’s department of local government following queries from both the auditor general and the province’s select standing committee on public accounts.
All three of the other recipients are still serving politicians, including South Africa’s current ambassador to Mozambique Mangisi Zitha, member of parliament Professor Simon Ripinga and member of the Mpumalanga House of Traditional Leaders Tikhontele Dlamini.
Fallout from the investigation, however, could also include Mpumalnga’s speaker of the legislature Elias Ginindza, who signed the power of attorney authorising the sale in 1991, while he served as KaNgwane’s minister of the interior.
Mpumalanga’s head of the department of health Tiny Jordaan, who served as Zitha’s secretary in 1991, may also be implicated, as he reportedly processed the sale.
Mabuza threatened a R2-million lawsuit against newspapers in May which carried initial reports that the auditor general was concerned about the sale of the farm. This was prior to documentation, indicating that he had mortgaged his farm for R480 000 and profited enormously from the transaction, coming to light.
Although Mabuza was consistently unavailable for comment this week, he has previously dismissed the auditor general’s concerns that the sale did not go through the KaNgwane Tender Board or public auction by saying that as he had rented the land for a number of years, he was entitled to first option on it.
“I started renting the farm, on which I grow litchis and paw-paws, in 1982. I developed it into what it is today and it is therefore right that I should have been given first option to buy it,” he told the M&G in May.
Also dismissing the unusually low price he paid, which the auditor general says was not a sale price but was instead just the transfer costs, he said: “Look, I did not set the sale price. The owner, as the land’s proprietor, should have known the property’s real worth.”
Mabuza confirmed that he bought the farm just after stepping down as KaNgwane’s chief minister, but was adamant that the transaction had been in his personal and not official capacity.
He was also insistent that he had bought the property from the South African Development Trust (SADT), which holds ownership of most of South Africa’s traditional tribal lands, and not from the KaNgwane government. The farm’s title deed, however, clearly states that the land was sold on behalf of the KaNgwane government.
The Department of Land Affairs also said that even if the farm had belonged to the SADT, it could not legally have been sold to a private individual at less than market value and without direct treasury instructions.
Confirming that all four farms had been SADT land until 1991, when it was transferred to the KaNgane government just before being sold, the department stressed that KaNgane could only have disposed of the property if it had specific legislation empowering it to do so.
Such legislation always includes stipulation that asset sales have to go through either the tender board or public auction, the department said.
Mabuza is not the only recipient of a government farm to have mortgaged it. According to the registrar of deeds, Chief Dlamini took a R262 000 mortgage on his 3,9ha farm immediately after buying it from the government in 1991. He also took out an additional R72 000 mortgage in 1992.
Dlamini is the traditonal leader for the greater Louieville region of KaNgwane — where all four farms are situated. If the land was tribal land as claimed by Mabuza, Dlamini would have been the person responsible for allocating it. Dlamini was a KaNgwane minister of culture at the time of the sale.
According to the registrar’s records, neither Zitha, who was KaNgwane’s last chief minister and who uses his 5,7ha farm as his official residence in South Africa, nor Ripinga have mortgaged their properties.
Mpumalanga local government officials, who were ordered to investigate the legality of the sales by the standing committee on public accounts, consistently refused to comment on the issue this week after initially attempting to dodge queries. Acting department head Steve Ngwenya finally said on Thursday that only Mpumalanga director general Frank Mbatha could comment on the investigation as he was the province’s accounting officer.
Mbatha, however, was alson unavailable to comment, according to his office.
“This whole thing stinks and no one wants to get landed with sorting it out. The problem here is that we’re talking about politicians — not former politicians, but people who are still with us,” said a senior government official, who declined to be named.
“And making it even worse is the fact that all these politicians have been elevated and given prominent positions. The investigation report on the sales will be delivered to the public accounts committee at the end of August and thereafter debated in provincial parliament.”