Cattle owners still waiting for clarity on commonages

SMALL-scale farmers have complained that the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality has done nothing further to earmark farming commonages in the wake of an incident in which roaming cattle were shot on a Kruisrivier farm.

They were speaking outside the Uitenhage Magistrate’s Court, where the farmer accused of shooting the 11 cattle in May had his case postponed again yesterday.

The case against Carlo Voigt, 37, was postponed to August 11 for further investigation. He is out on warning.

Voigt allegedly killed eight cattle on the farm and wounded three others.

He faces charges of malicious damage to property, contravention of the Animal Protection Act and the illegal discharge of a firearm.

The cattle, which belonged to a group of small-scale livestock farmers, were found piled in a heap at the farm on the outskirts of Uitenhage.

The incident caused an uproar in the community and highlighted the plight of small-scale farmers, who have been pleading with the municipality to provide commonage land for their livestock to graze.

A group of about 20 farmers gathered outside the courtroom where Voigt appeared yesterday.

KwaNobuhle urban farmer Michael Noda said: “We have been waiting for the municipality to respond to our request for a list identifying where the farming commonages are located in Uitenhage to avoid another incident. But we haven’t received a response.”

In February, the municipality told The Herald it had developed a commonage land development plan to deal with the issue of stray animals in the city.

At the time, the mayoral committee member for economic development, tourism and agriculture, Andrew Whitfield, said Uitenhage commonage land consisted of 20 portions of land, covering an area of 5 723ha.

Of this, 1 937ha is protected land and cannot be grazed, while the current grazeable area of 1 422ha can carry 356 cattle or 1 424 sheep and goats.

A further 2 364ha was a non-grazeable area consisting of valley thick bushes which needs to be deforested.

After deforestation, it can carry 592 cattle or 2 367 sheep and goats.

The total commonage land grazeable area after deforestation – 3 786ha – can carry only 948 cattle or 3 792 sheep and goats, while audited livestock numbers were already at a total of 3 600 animals (2 437 cattle and 1 163 goats) metro-wide (80% recorded).

“The budget for developing the commonages and unavailability of land remain the major challenges,” Whitfield said at the time.

The municipality failed to respond to questions yesterday on the location of the commonages and whether the date for setting new commonages had been finalised.