MBOMBELA – A R3,3 million payment that premier Mr David Mabuza had allegedly authorised in a land-claim deal in 2009 has ended up in the hands of the police.
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) laid the criminal complaint against Mabuza on November 26. Sgt Gerald Sedibe, spokesman for the Mpumalanga police confirmed that a case of fraud had been opened.
The EFF based their complaint on a forensic investigation conducted by Paul O’Sullivan and Associates (POAA) “as a matter of public interest” in 2003 into land purchases in the Badplaas area.
According to the investigation, the purchases took place in the name of the Ndwandwa Community Trust which was formed by Mr Pieter Visagie in 2002. POAA found that a selective sample showed that members of the trust included fake names and identity numbers as well as duplicated identity numbers.
POAA also found that the claims related to land not falling within the ambit of land qualifying for restitution in terms of Section 2 (3) of the Land Restitution Act 22 of 1994, which relates to property where occupants were dispossessed on or after June 19, 1913 as a result of discrimination.
However, according to the title deeds of some of the farms, provided by POAA and obtained from the Deeds Registry in Pretoria, white Afrikaans owners settled on the properties as early as the early 1870s.
After Ndwandwa Community Trust’s claim was approved by the Mpumalanga Regional Land Claims Commission (RLCC) in 2004, Visagie approached Mabuza, then MEC for Agriculture, for assistance, claiming he had been underpaid.
Mabuza set up a joint task team (JTT) consisting of representatives from the RLCC and Department of Land Affairs, including Mr Sonnyboy Sunday Maphanga, deputy director of land reform services in the department, with whom Mabuza was a co-director in a company, Nelesco 85, until March 2004.
In its report, dated December 9, 2008, the JTT found Visagie had been underpaid after irrigation infrastructure and equipment had been classified as movable assets, instead of immovable assets. It recommended that he be paid an additional R3,3 million, as he was owed R21,9 million in total. He had already been paid R18,5 million.
In a letter to the RLCC, signed by Mabuza on January 6, 2009, also obtained from POAA, he states: “It is the MEC’s considered opinion that the RLCC needs to render this due payment, as well as to ensure that valuation approaches and modalities are standardised with the objective to interact and relate with any land owner on a fair and equitable basis.”
Mr Cyril Chuene, member of the executive of the EFF in Mpumalanga, says Mabuza grossly overstepped his authority as MEC at the time to make recommendations to the RLCC in ordering the payment.
“Land claims fall under a national commission. There can be no way that a premier, HOD or MEC can have anything to do with it. The land was bought for people to get money, not for beneficiaries.”
POAA found that the acquired farms are being occupied by a small handful of “African persons not part of any previously dispossessed community who have for the most part allowed the farms to fall fallow and have sold off anything of value on the farms for cash.”
Spokesman in the Office of the Premier Mr Zibonele Mncwango said linking Mabuza with things that were not the responsibility of the MEC, is unfounded and malicious.
“We wish to state that matters relating to land claims are a competency of the land commissioners from the national department, not of the members of the executive.
“Therefore, linking the Honourable Premier with the things that were not the responsibility of the MEC is unfounded and malicious.
“If, however, there were any discrepancies in the process of claiming the land at that time, the honourable premier would be more than willing to look into the matter.
“We wish to encourage political parties to utilise the readily available channels of communication in raising issues of concern instead of engaging government through the media.”
