Community threatens to evict Balfour farmer

A dispute over a farm in Balfour has ended up in court after community members threatened to evict a farmer they claim purchased rights to the farm without their blessing.

Attorney and farmer Sango Mavuso turned to the courts after being threatened with eviction amid failure to meet community leaders to explain his presence on the farm. The farm is reportedly owned by a Communal Property Association (CPA), but Mavuso says that in 2012 he purchased “rights in and to the portion of the land at Picardy Farm”.

Mavuso was born on the farm and his mother was the principal of the farm school.

After securing employment, Mavuso purchased cattle and goats, which are being looked after on the farm.

He said in 2014, residents informed him that the community had taken a decision that he should vacate the farm.

Mavuso objected on the basis that he was one of the original communal dwellers of the farm.

Nothing happened for about four years until January 23 this year, when Mavuso received a call from a community leader.

He was instructed to attend a meeting with members of the local CPA on January 25.

He said he was unable to attend at such short notice.

On January 24, Mavuso received another call. He was told to avail himself at a meeting the following day as a decision was to be taken that he, his livestock and other possessions should leave the farm.

Mavuso could not attend and requested that the meeting be rescheduled for January 27.

However, he failed to attend this gathering too.

A third meeting was scheduled for February 1 and Mavuso asked his farm labourer to attend on his behalf.

The labourer contacted Mavuso, informing him that he was required to attend another meeting on February 3. Instead Mavuso approached the court, where he obtained an interim interdict barring his eviction.

He told the court that the committee had told his labourer they were tired of his attitude and had decided he should vacate the farm by no later than February 3, “or else they will eject me and my possessions and impound my livestock”.

Mavuso said based on this, he felt the community had “unlawfully and illegally threatened to dispossess me of my undisturbed possession of that portion of Picardy Farm that I occupy and utilise”.

In their submission, the CPA’s chairwoman, Venus Ngcuka, told the court the farm had been expropriated from its white owners by the then Ciskei government in 1982.

“Prior to the expropriation the owners allocated one farmhouse to one Philemon Yeko.

“Around 1984 and after the death of Mr Yeko, the farm manager allocated the farmhouse to [Mavuso’s] mother.

“The applicant’s mother retired and left the farm in 2011.

“It was only during 2012 that the applicant was seen on the farm after he had left the farm while an infant.” Ngcuka said in 2014, Mavuso was seen more often on the farm.

“Later that year, members of the CPA enquired from Mavuso how he, as a non-member of the CPA, came to be farming on land belonging to the CPA.”

He refused to speak to them, other than to state that he was born on the land.

Ngcuka said Mavuso continued taking livestock to the farm “without enquiring from the CPA or requesting its consent as owners of the land”.

“In December 2017 [Mavuso] was seen taking a tractor onto the farm to plough the land. That infuriated members of CPA,” stated Ngcuka.

Delivering his judgment on July 3, Grahamstown High Court judge Gerald Bloem said the CPA’s attempt to understand Mavuso’s presence on the farm was frustrated by the applicant’s excuses for his failure to meet them.

“His refusal to co-operate and his failure to attend the meeting rescheduled for January 27 2018, at his request, caused them to decide to request him to vacate the farm”.

Bloem said in the absence of facts, the fears expressed by Mavuso that the community planned to unlawfully evict him and impound his livestock were not well grounded.

“Since one of the three requisites for the grant of a final interdict is absent, the application must fail.”

Bloem said the CPA, as owners of the land, “can do with it whatever it wants as long as it is utilised for benefit of its members, and as long as the CPA acts within the law”.

The CPA, as owners of the land, can do with it whatever it wants as long as it benefits its members and is within the law