Marianne Merten
It took five minutes for the auctioneer’s final gong to signal the change of owner of Kromvlei fruit farm near Elgin lock, stock and barrel for half its market value.
No amount of cajoling could get the 60-strong crowd assembled on the steps of the white manor farmhouse to top the R11,75-million bid. Kromvlei’s land alone was valued at more than R15-million. Also adding value is the farm’s accreditation by British supermarket Tesco, a first in South Africa.
As the buyer will not be named until the sale is confirmed, rumours spread among the crowd that Land Bank officials bought the farm “for one of their empowerment projects”.
The two bank officials at the auction rejected this speculation, but confirmed that at least three Cape farms form part of its empowerment programme.
Farmers are worried. The low sale price means local land prices have effectively dropped. This will further depress their balance sheets, already under pressure from a downward spiral in the fruit market.
“This is going to have a snowball effect. We just had halved the worth of our assets but the liabilities remain the same,” said Daniel Joubert, who grows apples, pears and plums in Elgin.
Most of the farmers around Elgin, about 80km outside Cape Town, are battling with increasing production costs, stagnant produce prices and bad weather. Overheads are about R25000 a hectare, yet a ton of apples fetches less than R1000 or an average of R300 if sold to juice makers. Most of the fruit has to be exported to make a profit, but tastes abroad have changed.
Under such conditions it is difficult to break even. Auctions of bank- rupt farms in the Western Cape have increased over the past year, particularly in the fruit-growing areas around Ceres. In the next three weeks another five farms will come under the hammer in the Boland.
Some believe farm auctions could help speed up land reform. Centre for Rural Legal Studies senior researcher Ruth Hall said current laws allow such a proactive approach to the country’s pressing land needs, although appropriate regulations may still have to be drafted. “It’s an ideal opportunity for government to go out there and acquire good land and infrastructure.”
An assessment and recommendations on the economic feasibility of agriculture, jointly drafted by organised agriculture and the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs, will be handed to the president’s office within eight weeks.
The Land Bank, in close cooperation with the agriculture and land affairs department, has started an agricultural empowerment and land reform programme.
This Friday the Badenau farm in the Hex River Valley, which was bought out of curatorship, will be signed over to a black farmer. Two other farms have been identified for land reform in the Ceres district, with one of them already being operated by an empowerment company.
Under this programme the Land Bank acquires farms and then meets potential emerging farmers, farm workers and agricultural unions to discuss the title deed transfer to a workers’ trust or empowerment company. It maintains a share of the land on behalf of workers to be sold once the farm is profitable.
Kromvlei’s 200 workers and their families now face uncertainty. They have much to lose they live in brick homes or hostels, have a community hall, a crche and rugby field. Six pensioners and four widows have life tenure rights.
“We are a little worried. We must wait and see until the new owner comes here and tells us what he wants to do,” said farm worker Andries Koeries. “We put our faith in the Lord.”
@Anti-Mbeki pamphlet surfaces in Mpumalanga
Jaspreet Kindra
A pamphlet highly critical of President Thabo Mbeki’s leadership of the African National Congress is being circulated in Mpumalanga. It says Mbeki’s leadership is characterised by a “shift towards dictatorship”.
The badly written pamphlet has numerous incorrect spellings. Entitled Briefing Document, it calls on all former United Democratic Front (UDF) members “and those were in prison together with gunuine [sic] comrades who were in exile work together to save the movement from the disastrous path Thabo has put it on.
“Consultations in the province must start immediately, with a view to consolidate amongst branches, regions and provincial structures ahead of the 51st national conference next year, which we are lobbying, it must be held in Cape Town [sic].”
ANC spokesperson Nomfanelo Kota says: “The party dismisses the pamphlet with the contempt it deserves. It is very un-ANC for people to communicate or lobby through faceless pamphlets while there is a proper process of lobbying their choice of leaders through ANC structures.”
Mbeki’s office would not comment.
The Mpumalanga pamphlet proposes a list of names for the party’s top positions as a “mere guide for consultative purposes”:
“President: Cyril Ramaphosa; Deputy president: Terror Lekota; National chairperson: Tokyo Sexwale; Secretary general: Kwalema Motlante [sic]; Deputy secretary general: Valli Moosa, Treaure [sic] general: Popo Molefe/Mathew [sic] Phosa.”
This is the second pamphlet critical of Mbeki to emerge in the run-up to the elections of provincial ANC office-bearers to be held later this year.
A pamphlet, believed to have originated in the North West province, caused a furore among the ANC leadership in April. It was followed by Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete publicly identifying Ramaphosa, Sexwale and Phosa as co-conspirators of a plot to overthrow Mbeki. Tshwete named former Mpumalanga ANC Youth League leader James Nkambule as the source of the allegations.
The allegations sent waves of paranoia through ANC provincial structures as divisions between former UDF members, those who were in exile during apartheid and those held on Robben Island surfaced.
The Mpumalanga pamphlet refers to this controversy while citing “rumour mongering” as a feature of Mbeki’s tenure, “characterised by his use of state resources to deal with opponents, eg. the Tshwete-Nkambule plot saga”. It claims Mbeki’s tenure has been characterised by:
l Continuous and deliberate sidelining of key former UDF and Robben Island leaders.
l A deliberate campaign to side-line key former exiled members who differed with him in exile.
l Centralisation of power in his hands by appointing “his cronies” into strategic positions in the ANC and the state machinery.
ANC sources in Mpumalanga cite disillusionment within the party’s provincial structures as a reason for the pamphlet surfacing. “There is unhappiness about the deployment of party personnel from the province and to the province,” says one, referring to the removal of six senior ANC leaders last month to the national Parliament.
An official deployed from the national Parliament, Thabang Makwetla former ANC caucus chairperson says he has not come across any disgruntled members. “The recommendation for the deployment had come from the province itself at the political tribunals held here some months ago.”
Nkambule has been expelled from the ANC Youth League in Mpumalanga on charges of misconduct.
@New claims at Coega
The CDC has awarded a number of contracts to business partners of the company’s chairperson
Stefaans Brmmer
Former presidential adviser Moss Ngoasheng this week denied a conflict of interest after his business associates landed a string of contracts from the state-owned Coega Development Corporation (CDC), which he chairs.
The CDC, which wants to establish South Africa’s first industrial development zone (IDZ) adjacent to a new deep-water harbour at Coega near Port Elizabeth, this week placed advertisements in major newspapers defending itself against charges that it is acting outside the law as it has no IDZ operator’s permit.
“If the anti-Coega lobby succeeds, too many people in the Eastern Cape Province will continue to live in joblessness, homelessness and hopelessness,” the adverts read.
The CDC also acknowledged it had changed its approach from seeking investors first before committing large amounts of public funds to infrastructure to one of providing infrastructure first in the belief it will attract investors. The adverts read: “Unless you have basic infrastructure, no investor will come. Very rarely are commitments made on the basis of blueprints or grand visions.”
The Coega development started in the mid-1990s as a private sector initiative, but was taken over by the government in 1998 when minerals giant Billiton, which would have built a multibillion-rand zinc smelter, withdrew.
Government officials have since touted Coega as the ideal home for offset investments flowing from the controversial arms procurement package. But the likely withdrawal of German company Ferrostaal, which would have built a R4,8-billion stainless steel plant as an offset to the South African order of submarines, has dealt a further blow.
The CDC has awarded a number of contracts for studies and development work. At least R250-million is estimated to have been provided or allocated by the national and Eastern Cape governments to the CDC. But now there are questions about the procedures the CDC has followed to award these contracts and potential conflicts of interest.
Reports last weekend said Khuthele Projects, a joint venture established by BKS, a company part-owned and chaired by former minister of defence Joe Modise, was contracted to do an integrated transportation study for Coega. Earlier, as minister, Modise was involved in the negotiations with the German Submarine Consortium whose Ferrostaal would have been built at Coega.
Colm Allan, director of the non-government Public Service Accountability Monitor, was quoted as saying: “For Modise to benefit financially as a businessman from decisions that he made while he was a Cabinet minister is an astounding conflict of interests.”
Now another claimed conflict of interest has emerged this time around Ngoasheng, who served as President Thabo Mbeki’s economic adviser until a year ago, and who has been chairperson of the board of the CDC since its inception. CDC has awarded several contracts to business partners of Ngoasheng.
l In November 1999 the CDC announced it had awarded a sewerage study tender to a joint venture including consulting engineers Stewart Scott.
l At the same time the CDC announced a tender to study the feasibility of a hazardous waste site to Bohlweki, a firm headed by Makgabo Maruma, the chairperson and largest individual shareholder of Stewart Scott.
l In May 2001 Stewart Scott said it was part of joint ventures that won two contracts from the CDC the preliminary design of bridges and a sewerage reticulation package.
Stewart Scott and Maruma are business partners with Safika, the company co-founded and co-owned by Ngoasheng, through a joint company called Safika DHV Management Services. Effectively, the CDC has given contracts to business partners of the CDC chairperson.
Allan this week argued: “If the Coega project is to have any form of credibility, it is vital to establish whether Ngoasheng declared his private interests in respect of these companies and whether he then recused himself from any further involvement in the process leading to the awarding of contracts to them.”
The CDC this week failed to give a clear explanation on whether Ngoasheng indeed did, or should have, recused himself from the tender process. It said in a statement: “The CDC has a formal procurement policy for the appointment of service providers … CDC board members and management comply with accepted corporate governance principles.
“However, Modise was not chairman of BKS at the time of Khuthele’s appointment. Neither was Ngoasheng associated with Stewart Scott at the time of this firm’s appointment by the CDC. It is disingenuous to create an ex post facto connection between Modise and Khuthele, and between Ngoasheng and Stewart Scott.”
While the CDC explanation may hold some water as far as Modise is concerned, it appears to misrepresent the Ngoasheng case. The Stewart Scott website confirms that the firm went into business with Safika in 1999, the year CDC awarded Stewart Scott its first but not last contract.
Ngoasheng, through his representative David Barritt, this week told a different story. Barritt said: “There’s a CDC procurement committee that Moss [Ngoasheng] does not sit on. He had no knowledge of the awards … He would have recused himself if he was remotely involved, but he was not.”
@Cosas gears up for protest marches
Bongani Majola
The Congress of South African Students (Cosas) has once again started a national campaign of marches to force the Department of Education to scrap government subsidies to private and former Model C schools.
In March this year Cosas was criticised when its march against government subsidies through downtown Johannesburg was characterised by vandalism and looting.
Cosas president Julius Malema has promised the marches will be more disciplined this time round.
The first march is scheduled for Bloemfontein on July 27, with others planned throughout the country in August.
Salim Vally, a researcher at the Wits education policy unit, says that it is easy and politically expedient to merely condemn Cosas for its plan of action, while the issues it raises are not being addressed.
“The issues are the appalling conditions in poor schools, the backlog from apartheid and the general sense of alienation felt by the youth in so far as they see their job prospects,” he says.
Malema says Cosas is angry about the government’s continuing subsidisation of “rich schools” while there are schools “where students attend under trees, others in classrooms without doors, windows, electricity, water and telephones. We call upon the government to channel resources to previously disadvantaged schools.”
Echoing Malema’s sentiment, Vally notes that inequalities are increasing between rich and poor schools. However, he says, the subsidies to private schools have decreased and “there is a complex range of criteria for subsidies to decrease. But even such improvements are grossly inadequate, there is no way that poor schools can change as much as they want.”
Valley sounded a note of caution to Cosas not to lump all “private” schools together, as they range from religious, non-profit private schools to the traditional private schools where high fees are paid for the best education. “I suspect Cosas is targeting the latter,” he says.
While noting the “very volatile combination of factors involved in subsidies”, Vally says subsidies are not the real issue. He says the issue is “the enormous spending on armaments, for example, which means resources go elsewhere instead of the desperately needed redress on social problems”.
He says the campaign is a sign that Cosas and many school-goers in poor communities are desperate about the lack of resources and the general conditions at schools.