SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Nelspruit | Monday
THE State is about to expropriate a second farm and give it to rural families after its owners demanded double what the government was prepared to pay for it.
Land and agriculture minister Thoko Didiza’s signature will ensure that 20 hectares of land belonging to Cairn Trust (Pty) Ltd outside Nelspruit in Mpumalanga is given to 74 farm worker families.
Mpumalanga land affairs project officer Mish Khoza said this week that the Trust wanted R1,2m for the land, while an evaluator appointed by government put the price at R600_000 in 1999.
“Land expropriation is the government’s last resort, and we can still stop it if they change their mind,” said Khoza.
He said the department stepped in five years ago when Cairn Trust member Michael Pereira wanted to evict the families, who had lived on the farm for 30 years, because the farm had stopped operating.
Khoza said national land affairs’ director-general Peter Mayende had already approved the expropriation, and only Didiza’s signature was needed to authorise it.
Pereira would not comment on the expropriation, except to say that the families continued to live on the farm after it stopped operating six years ago.
“They are not supposed to be here, and more than half of them are Mozambicans,” he said.
This will be the second farm to be expropriated in South Africa. Last week Didiza decided to expropriate 1 270 hectares belonging to Willem Pretorius of Boomplaats Farm near Lydenburg, also in Mpumalanga.
Pretorius, a member of the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU), wanted R2,1m to give the land to the Dinkwanyane community, but the government offered R840_000. The community lodged a restitution claim on the land in 1996. It had forcibly removed by the apartheid government in 1957.
TAU spokesman Jack Loggenberg said his union had set up a fund to assist its members to fight land claims. Loggenberg said that land expropriation would cause the country serious economic damage because it would deter investors.
Agri-Mpumalanga president Lourie Bosman said land expropriation always disadvantaged landowners because they had to pay for legal costs to oppose it. – African Eye News Service
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Stubborn farmer gets land grabbed February 13, 2001