The state has decided to drop a land claim against South Africa’s biggest sugarcane farmer, Beeld reported on Tuesday.
“I am extremely relieved,” farmer Charl Senekal of KwaZulu-Natal told the Afrikaans daily.
He was facing South Africa’s biggest land claim against one land owner for his 20,000 hectares in the Pongola area.
The Gumbi clan had put in a claim for all of Senekal’s land north of the Mkuze River between Mkuze and Pongola, while the Myeni clan wanted to claim the land south of the river.
Senekal appointed two ethnologists to look into the claims that were lodged nine years ago.
The ethnologists investigated the claim and concluded that both clans never owned Senekal’s land, and that it had been owned by whites since 1880.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform did not give any comment on the matter. — Sapa