/ 31 May 2019

Promised land becomes the land of broken promises

Promised land becomes the land of broken promises
Let down: The farm co-op Moses Masilela belongs to has never received a cent from the government. (Delwyn Verasamy)

The state is stealing people’s land and using money meant for land reform to provide kickbacks to well-connected people. In a countrywide investigation, Special Assignment’s Hazel Friedman continues to look at how that land was stolen and people’s dreams have been shattered. This report is a follow-on of the Mail & Guardian investigation last week into the ‘Luthuli House comrades-in-farms’ and the private companies benefiting from a purposefully broken system


Moses Benzi “Smallboy” Masilela has a precious bond with Weltevreden, a 1 064 hectare farm on the outskirts of Emalahleni in Mpumalanga. The 51-year-old was born there, his parents worked on the farm as labourers and his grandmother is buried in the farm’s modest cemetery, next to his mother and one of his brothers.

The seven households on the farm used to mix their time as labourers with small-scale farming of their own. “So, we also became farmers in our own right,” recalls Masilela. “This farm is part of my family’s soul and identity. Every patch of ground is connected to who I am.”

Masilela is the de-facto spokesperson for the Siyasebenza farming co-operative, which the seven households founded. The other members of the co-op did not want to speak on the record when the Mail & Guardian visits the farm.

Weltevreden was owned by Felix de Villiers. Shortly before his death in 2007, two portions of the farm were sold to the government for R12-million. These were then incorporated into the department of rural development and land reform’s recapitalisation and development programme, one of the key mechanisms for giving land back to the people who should own it.

Under the programme, the government buys farms and appoints beneficiaries or lessees to make them productive and self-sustainable. This is to be achieved through the mentorship of a strategic partner or agribusiness. Without a strategic partner, the programme’s funds cannot be released.

The M&G reported last week about how the programme is being abused (“Farm-flipping: How land reform was broken by the elite”). Although members of the Big Five co-op were meant to be the beneficiaries of a table grape farm in the Western Cape, six years after it was approved at national level in 2013, there is still no lease. The farms is in ruins and the beneficiaries are being threatened with eviction. They said this is happening because they have refused to comply with the land department’s desire to impose an allegedly unethical strategic partner on them. The abuse included a private company and “Luthuli House comrades-in-farms”.

In this case, and others, much of the fault lies with the department.

In Mpumalanga, Masilela says the department had verbally pledged more than 74 hectares of grazing and arable land to the Weltevreden farm occupants so that they could continue farming. But, instead of transferring the land, the department says it entered into a caretaker agreement with the dwellers, “to secure their tenure rights”.

A copy of that caretaker agreement has never been given to the farm occupants, despite their repeated requests. The M&G has seen the trail of documents confirming this.

As long-term farm dwellers, Masilela believed he and his family would be provided with security of tenure. This is a right to which they are entitled under the 1997 Establishment of Security of Tenure Act and the Labour Reform Tenant Act. But, without title deeds or formal leases, farm occupants remain as insecure as ever. They are unable to receive government funds or bank loans for infrastructure development and are vulnerable to exploitation and evictions. This is especially true if the land holds potential for large-scale commercial or mining development. Then, people are quick to profit from the spoils of state-owned land, often allegedly in violation of the rights of the people who have historical or legal ties to the land.

“What we have found in our research is that we have a state with pro-poor rhetoric but in practice distrusts poor people from accessing land,” says Ruth Hall. She is a member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Land Reform Advisory Panel and a professor at the Institute of Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape.

Hall’s research has been borne out by M&G investigations on state-owned farms countrywide.

Similar stories of despair have been told by farm dwellers and small-scale farmers in remote enclaves such as Gwatyu, in the former Transkei homeland. In most cases people simply want to be acknowledged as having a legitimate tie to the land, to farm productively and have security of tenure. They accuse the government of abandonment, intimidation and of covering up people’s rights to title deeds.

Evidence incriminating senior officials in wasteful expenditure on farm projects supposedly earmarked for poverty alleviation has been freely shared by frustrated land reform claimants. In many of these cases, officials have flagrantly flouted procurement regulations and violated the Public Finance Management Act. How much money has been lost through wasteful expenditure or fraud is yet to be calculated.

‘I think we have to acknowledge that it is the state that’s stealing people’s land and the state that is diverting the budget that was meant to be used for land reform to partners who provide kickbacks to political parties,” says Aninka Claassens, who heads the Land and Accountability Research centre at the University of Cape Town.

Her research reveals that people feel betrayed by government’s apparent inability or unwillingness to provide them with security of tenure, she says. “Until the problems with land reform are identified for what they are — elite enrichment, people on the take — they will never be solved.”

Hall and Claassens say that what was meant to be the promised land for rural farmers is increasingly becoming more the land of broken promises.

Investigations by the M&G and previously by the SABC’s Special Assignment back up this narrative, with corruption on state-owned farms — allegedly between officials and politically-connected cadres and corporations — being so rampant that it has been labelled “the elite capture of land reform”.

Hall says: “We have found multiple instances where the state programme has been captured and funds intended for deserving land reform programmes have been diverted into the wrong hands or [are] unaccounted for.” In some cases this has been a result of incompetence or inadequate oversight, “but in others it points to direct and intentional collusion between the wealthy and politically connected”.

This scenario is allegedly also taking place on the Weltevreden farm. It has become the epicentre of another alleged land scam, and the funds meant to fix the farm appear to have vanished.

Documents seen by the M&G show that in 2007 and 2008 a three-year contract was drawn up between the land department and a company called Ithuseng ha Dlamini, to lease one of the farm portions.

According to Windeed, an online tool for gathering company information, Ithuseng ha Dlamini’s operations include wholesale and retail goods, furniture and restaurants — nothing related to farming. It is a shelf company, whose principal member is Remnant Moyo, an investment banker who heads Nedbank’s public sector and black economic empowerment portfolio. His résumé on Bloomberg reads like a who’s who of corporate and political might.

Responding through lawyers who say they represent Ithuseng ha Dlamini, Moyo denies receiving any government funding.

The lease contract between Ithuseng ha Dlamini and the department states that the lessee will be responsible for maintaining Weltevreden, providing electricity and water, and will be liable for damages.

But the farm is in a shambles. Electricity and running water are luxuries of the past. Apart from a mealie field near the entrance to Weltevreden, there is little production on the portion of the farm visited by the M&G. In fact, much of it is dilapidated and vandalised, and the farm occupants live in abject poverty.

Moyo says that when he applied to lease his portion of the state-owned farm, he signed two separate three-year leases between August 2008 and 2014 that are “awaiting renewal”.

He insists he tried to help the farm dwellers but that they rejected his overtures, preferring to work with white farmers, a claim Masilela angrily disputes.

The department says that an amount of just over R3-million was released through its recapitalisation and development programme to another entity on a portion of Weltevreden that was also supposed to be a “strategic partner” for the farm occupants. This entity is called Xtrata Sebenzana (Pty) Ltd. But a search through the Company and Intellectual Property website yields no information on it.

The department has not clarified ownership of this company or its farming bona fides.

Compounding the confusion is the fact that the department says the funds were transferred in 2012 and that the money was used to procure seeds and fertiliser, as well as a tractor for Moyo. The department says he planted 200 hectares of yellow maize, and that some of the funding was used for overhead costs at the time, but that no money was paid directly to Moyo.

In a further twist, in an affidavit Masilela filed to the police this month, he claims that, in 2017, a consulting firm called Entsika visited the farm to find out what had happened to the missing funds and initially accused the farm dwellers of misappropriating the money. Masilela insists they have never received a cent of government funds earmarked for development of the farm. He says that Entsika subsequently went silent on the fate of the funds, but that officials from the department admitted recapitalisation funds had been provided to another lessee, but refused to disclose details.

Entsika is a private company that in 2017 was awarded a tender by the department for nearly R143-million to “project manage” state-owned farms in all nine provinces over a three-year period. In response to the M&G’s questions as to what Entsika does on these farms in general, and on Weltevreden in particular, an Entsika spokesperson cited “a service level agreement … and non-disclosure clauses [that] prohibits us from sharing any information obtained through this project”.

In 2015, David Mabuza, the former premier of Mpumalanga and now ANC deputy president, initiated a commission of inquiry into the shocking conditions of farm occupants in the province. Although the findings focused on the iniquities suffered by farm dwellers under white farmers, the report did not address the culture of corruption on state-owned farms.

During this time, land on Weltevreden seems to have been earmarked for mining. In 2004, Australian mining giant BHP and later, in 2015, its offshoot South 32, secured mining rights to substantial portions of the farm. Mining rights applications already cover two-thirds of the province.

Last year, Masilela approached the Human Rights Commission to intervene, but to no avail.

“We count for nothing because we don’t have money or power,” laments Masilela. “It is clear that government does not care about our rights, but only about talking the talk or filling their pockets.”

At the time of going to press, the presidency had not responded to M&G requests for comment.