INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
Durban – A Kwazulu-Natal community trust has taken the government and a traditional leader to court, asking them to account for misappropriated funds which, the trust says, were needed to run its farm.
In court papers lodged in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, the Bhekamafa Community Trust at eMacambini, near Mandeni on the Zululand coast, said Inkosi Khayelihle Mathaba, whom they have also accused of violence and victimisation following the shooting of a community member in November last year, must explain what happened to more than R14 million given to him by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform to buy a farm at eMangethe.
Mathaba initially lodged the claim on behalf of the trust which, according to the claim documents, was based on forced removals in 1977.
Soon after the deal was approved in 2002 he allegedly bought a commercial farm from the Dunn family for R7m.
But 10 years later the community said they did not have the title deeds and demanded to know what had happened to the remaining R7m supposedly held by the department at Ithala Bank which, they said, was needed to operate the farm.
They also questioned what had happened to cattle and goats which had disappeared from the farm.
In May 2003 the former chief land claims commissioner, Tozi Gwanya, was also suspicious of payments to the trust.
In a letter to former provincial commissioner Thabi Shange he asked: “What are the claimants throwing these state funds (grants) into?”
He said no business plan had been submitted and queries to the department about how the money was being spent had gone unanswered.
The community said Ithala also had no records of such an account and that all documents informing them how the money had been spent were missing, and neither the department nor Mathaba would tell them where they were.
In the papers they said: “We are fearful that the cash reserves of the trust may have been depleted, but we cannot begin to investigate this without the information we seek.”
The 1 196 hectare sugar cane and cattle farm, now under lease to Tongaat Hulett, was operational when Mathaba took over, but by 2010 production had collapsed.
After the inkosi was ousted as the director, the reconstituted trust began asking for the title deeds, trust documents and bank statements. Despite its turning to the Public Access to Information Act, the department has not responded.
Mathaba said he had left the documents at unknown “vacated premises” where he had been conducting the affairs of the trust.
In the papers the community alleged that the trust had never had any offices, and the only building on the farm had been searched, but no documents had been found. “If this claim is true… we are alarmed, because no important trust documents should have been left unattended,” they said.
A community protest in September last year also bore little fruit as the marchers had been snubbed by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, who is named as a respondent and had been asked to receive their grievances.
While the national and regional land departments had failed to file answering affidavits by yesterday’s deadline, Mathaba told The Mercury he “knew nothing” as papers had not been served on him.
Provincial land claims commission spokesman Nokuthokoza Ndlela said because the matter was sub judice she could not say whether or not the commission would file an answering affidavit.
colleen.dardagan@inl.co.za
The Mercury
