Disgruntled Mpumalanga farm workers are pooling their meagre earnings to take legal action against their equity partner for allegedly refusing to divulge the performance of a R16-million export farm they co-own.
The more than 200 farm workers-turned-shareholders at Inala Farm near Malelane will be the first in South African land-reform history to take such action against their equity partner.
Many other illiterate land-reform beneficiaries have had to watch helplessly as their farms crumbled and their land was taken away.
“We’ve begged the government many times to intervene on our behalf but there has been no reaction,” said Inala shareholder Aaron Makamo.
“Books have been closed to us for seven years and, even if we’re illiterate, we deserve to be told about our shares because we’re the owners of this farm,” he said.
The 1300ha estate is one of the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs’s flagship land-redistribution projects. It was bought out by 600 workers who used their subsidy grants of R15000 each in 1996.
The workers gained 25% shareholding on the farm. The R15000 grant they took disqualified them from getting any other grants from the land affairs department or the Department of Housing for low-cost houses.
The workers complain that seven years down the line the deal hasn’t changed their lives and that they are still earning as little as R500 a month.
“We’ll try to solve the matter through law, because negotiations have failed. Whatever little money we have will be put into fighting for our rights,” Makamo said.
Inala manager and equity shareholder Piet de Wet indicated in 1998 that the farm had doubled its turnover from R7,8-million to R16,4-million. The farm produces bananas, sugar cane, mangoes and litchis.
De Wet dismissed the farm workers’ allegations as untrue and malicious. “It’s a story that finds its root in the union [National Farms Allied Industries Workers’ Union],” he said.
“There are financial statements every year that are given to four representatives of the workers’ trust, and our books are audited by independent chartered accountants,” he added.
He said the statements were not available for public scrutiny, however, because Inala (Pty) Ltd was a private company.
He conceded no dividends had been paid out to shareholders yet, but explained that it was because the farm had not made a profit.
“It was a bankrupt farm when we took it and we still have to break even,” said De Wet.
He said the farm had dramatically improved over the years, and R20-million had been paid out in six years as wages for the workers.
Union representative Charles Khoza said he has found a lawyer to represent the shareholders. “This is not a fight against De Wet as an individual. All we want to know about is the shares of the people,” he said.
“They’re suffering more than before. Their grants would have been better used for houses,” he said.
Khoza accused both provincial and national government of ignoring the workers’ pleas for assistance, but the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs has explained that it can’t intervene because the farm is a private enterprise. — African Eye News Service