Gavin Walker decided to move to Porterville from KZN three years ago after the third farmer was murdered in the Mooi River district. “There was no point in gambling on not being the next target,” he said. Walker sold off his horse stud and started the search for a manageable piece of land in the Western Cape where he could start up a small farming operation again.
A promising new start?
In August 2005 he finally found what he thought was the perfect option – 70ha of overgrown but promising land near Porterville. It was a section of a larger farm that had been subdivided and sold off. Walker’s piece did not have any buildings on it and he rented the farmhouse from Boet Immelman, the farmer who had bought the other section. “We were able to move right in and I started clearing the aliens that had taken over large parts of the farm and bought ten mares to slowly start up a stud again.” But unbeknown to him, Walker had bought himself an expensive share in a hornet’s nest.
Walker and Immelman had bought their land from Siyanqoba Farming Enterprises, a BEE company that had got itself into financial difficulties. With monies owing to Land Bank and farming operations having practically ground to a halt, the company had sold the farm off in two parts – one section to Walker, and the remainder to local farmer Boet Immelman.
Siyanqoba Trust, the 55% shareholder in Siyanqoba Farming Enterprises, was made up of 20 previously disadvantaged people – most of them farmworkers from the surrounding area. When the venture was set up, it was decided that most of the Siyanqoba trustees would work and live on the farm. Now, five years later, with their company broke and the farm sold off, these same people were refusing to vacate the houses they lived in on the farm. They claimed to have been tricked into the sale of the farm and accused the authorities of not having done enough to save the BEE venture. They also said they would not move off the farm unless they were provided with alternative accommodation.
In March this year, the transfer of the property came through and Boet Immelman, the new owner, wanted the previous owners to leave. But they refused. He obtained an eviction order to have the five families remaining on the farm removed, but a day before it was due, things took a dramatic turn. A bus-load of protesters arrived on the farm. They were all members of an organisation called the Black Association of the Wine and Spirits Industry (Bawsi) – an umbrella body which includes unions, NGOs, farmworker associations and emerging farmers.
Things turn nasty
“It got ugly very fast,” said Walker. The riot police were called in. “At one stage, while I was talking to the police, one of the protesters came up to me and asked me what my house was like on the inside. He said he hoped it was nice, because they were moving in that night. The next thing I saw some of them walking past my house with my two front gates they had ripped off in full view of the riot police.” The situation got so heated that police advised Walker and his family to leave the farm for their own safety. “It was incredible. People were trespassing on my property, hurling insults, threats and obscenities at us, yet the police were powerless to make them leave. In the end we had to because we’d been tipped off that there was worse to come.”
The next day, on Workers’ Day, hundreds of people descended on Ertjieskloof. “By 9am there were between 700 and 800 protesters on the farm. The buses that had brought them were parked along the farm road. It was a full-scale farm invasion,” said Walker. “That evening the police from Saaron called me to say they had been given a letter to hand over to me. It was a so-called eviction notice threatening me to get off my own farm.”
The following day Walker and Immelman applied for an urgent interdict against Bawsi and its leadership. It was granted in the Cape High Court. Bawsi, in the meantime, was having the eviction notice temporarily overturned in the Tulbagh Magistrates Court. The problems had started a long time back, said Walker. “If I had known of the tensions, I would never have bought this farm. Right from the start there was intimidation. Apart from the constant verbal intimidation, they broke locks, stole building material and let my horses out.”
For Immelman, things were just as bad. His farm manager and son-in-law were stoned on a number of occasions when they tried to access the farm, and furrows were dug across the access road and obstructions created with logs and stones to stop vehicles. “The farm I have paid millions for is basically a no-go area for me right now,” he said.
Background to the rift
The story of this farm reads like a how-to-not-make-a-BEE-deal-work manual. At the heart of it lies an internecine rift between the beneficiaries of the Siyanqoba Trust – the group of previously disadvantaged farmworkers who had come together for the purposes of the empowerment deal. “The first year was a good one,” said Sakkie Brink, the former farm manager and beneficiary. “We stuck to the business deal. It went well, we made good money and then the trouble started.”
The real break, however, seems to centre around the accusation that Brink and the two other directors from the BEE group were in the pocket of the white partner who, they said, was making off with the profits. “The workers wanted to know where the money had gone and why they were not being paid dividends,” said Hannes Smit, a spokesperson for the disgruntled BEE group. Brink counters that all had agreed dividends would be paid out after five years and that until then all profits were to be ploughed back into the farming operation. “It wasn’t as if people were working for nothing. We were all being paid salaries – more than anyone had been earning in their previous jobs.”
Finally, the bickering led to a major split, with the one group refusing to take orders from Brink, the designated farm manager. Of the once-vibrant farming operation, there was very little left in the end. The farm sank further and further into debt. Among other problems, Siyanqoba Enterprises owed Land Bank money, and there were also huge outstanding electricity and water bills. Alie van Jaarsveld, spokesperson for Kobus Dowry, the MEC for agriculture in the Western Cape, said his department, Land Bank and the Department of Land Affairs had meeting after meeting with all those involved to find a solution and get the farm back on track. “One of the issues was that they said they did not understand the financials. Finally the department went as far as paying to get a complete set of statements which was given to the workers’ trust so they could see for themselves what was going on. We did everything within the rules and regulations, but finally the only solution was to sell the farm. In this way they would be able to pay off their debts and still make some profit. In fact, if it were not for our intervention, Land Bank would have auctioned the farm off a long time ago.”
The group living on the farm, however, insist they were tricked into selling. They claim their signatures were fraudulently obtained on the Resolution to Sell, which preceded the formal sale. Their adviser, Hannes Smit, insists they would have never agreed to sell the farm. “How can the state give millions of rands of taxpayers’ money to buy land for empowerment but nobody monitors that deal? Nobody checks on the progress of those they claim to empower? The training and support they were promised, what happened to that?”
Justice in the end
“I believe in BEE. I think it is a good thing and it is ironic that I bought this piece of land so that I can set up a viable business for my farmworkers. But that is not the issue here. What matters is that I legally bought a farm. I did it according to the book. I spent R2,4 million doing so and now I can’t farm it. I don’t need this aggravation in my life. If they give me my money back, they can get the farm back. If not, they must respect the law,” said Immelman. One way or another, that sentiment has won out. Exactly seven days after the protests of righteous indignation on Ertjieskloof, the beneficiaries of the Siyanqoba Trust each accepted a payout of R9 000 as their share of the profits of the sale of the farm – even those who had insisted to the end they had never agreed to sell. With that they have given up any claim to the land and will ultimately have to move off the land.
