EC RURAL AGENCY ‘KILLED OFF’ KANGELA CITRUS TRUST FARM

Wrongful interference in citrus farm project by ECRDA spells crop disaster

The beneficiaries and trustees of the ill-fated Kangela Citrus Farm Empowerment Project in Addo can resume farming operations after the Grahamstown High Court on Friday interdicted the Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency from interfering with the citrus farms or the trust.

Court papers spell out shocking details of how the government agency rode roughshod over trustees, fiddled minutes of meetings, and imposed on the trust its own version of how to run the company. The result, say court papers, is that the trees of the once-functioning citrus farm, whose crops were annually sold locally and exported, have not been fertilised, sprayed or pruned, which could result in disaster for its 2019 crop.

Just days after rural development and agrarian reform MEC Xolile Nqatha claimed to have replaced the trust and accused the trustees of corruption, the high court effectively found his government agency was wrongly interfering in both the trust and its project.

According to trustee Mbulelo Mjeku, the ECRDA had effectively hijacked the farming project and stopped the tender for the management and marketing services on the Kangela citrus farms, which would have seen the successful bidder properly preparing the trees for next year’s harvest. Despite this, the ECRDA had itself failed to pay for pruning, fertilising and spraying of the trees, all of which usually take place in September and October. This could potentially result in losses running into millions of rands.

Arguing the matter on behalf of the trust, Advocate Richard Buchanan, SC, on Friday said if the trust failed in its attempt to interdict the ECRDA from interfering in the farming project, it would consign the trust and its citrus farms to ruin.

But he said if the ECRDA was interdicted, it would free the trust to appoint a service provider with access to working capital to manage the farm and market the produce.

The controversial project had its origins in a shady multimillion-rand deal in 2002 under the stewardship of then agriculture MEC Max Mamase and one-time Addo citrus king Norman Benjamin, who sold the farm to the department at an absurdly inflated price. Benjamin has since died.

The corrupt deal was exposed and, instead of Benjamin retaining a 51% shareholding in holding company, Kangela Citrus Farms, it was taken over in its entirety. The Kangela Empowerment Trust was established in 2004 and was given a 49% shareholding in the company on behalf of the 44 beneficiary workers on the farm.

The remaining 51% of the shares in Kangela Citrus Farms resides in the ECRDA. But, according to court papers, in 2009, ownership of the farms was transferred into the name of the trust.

The trust, which had no working capital, had duly appointed the managing and marketing functions to successful bidder, SAFE, which had turned the farming operations into a success story for some 10 years.

Judge Jeremy Pickering found the ECRDA had mounted no coherent defence to the allegations apart from bald denials. He interdicted the ECRDA from continuing with any farming operations on the farms owned by the trust or from in any way interfering with the running of the farming operations or the operations of the trust.