FRESH contentions over land distribution in Stellenbosch have emerged and the DA-controlled municipality has been accused of doing little to address cheap long-term leases dished out to mostly white farmers at the start of democracy.
According to a document obtained by Weekend Argus, some tenants pay as little as R2 000 monthly. The lease agreements, valid for a period of 50 years, date back to April 1, 1994, and run until March 2044. Most of the leases were entered into or renewed just before the country’s first democratic elections on April 27, 1994.
Back in 2007, the Cape Argus revealed how an investigative report by Percy Sonn & Associates into the matter highlighted how, while previous lease agreements had been for up to nine years, most of those signed between 1991 and April 1, 1994, were for 50 years.
The report focused on land allocations by the council when it was run by the now-defunct New National Party in the dying days of apartheid.
Cameron Dugmore, the ANC’s leader of the opposition in the Western Cape Legislature, said: “We believe that these leases must be cancelled and then re-allocated in a manner which advances land redistribution, equity and redress.
“What happened before 1994 was a cynical and racist act to deny coloured and African farmers the opportunity to acquire state land for agriculture.”
Cameron said they would ask the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development to investigate the matter.
“This forms part of the ANC’s land audit campaign across the province.”
The documents showed how one of the tenants – WS Smit Boerdery (Edms) – leases four farms of respectively 20.5ha, 35.54ha, 11ha and 8.5ha.
For the 35.54ha farm the tenant paid R7 500 a month while the 8.5ha farm costs roughly R1 795 and the 20.5ha farm less than R5000 a month.
The owners of the Stellenbosch Golf Club pay about R14 800 a month, including the levy.
The club’s general manager, Chris van der Merwe, said: “We pay our rent on a yearly basis and on top of that we pay rates and taxes. “We rent directly from the municipality.”
Van der Merwe said that in addition, rates and taxes brought the bill to R1.8 million a year.
Stellenbosch Municipality’s spokesperson Stuart Grobbelaar said: “Long term lease agreements are not unique to our municipality.”
He said before 1994, various councils across South Africa entered into lease agreements with various tenants.
“Some of these lease agreements were entered into in 1934. Others date back to 1991, 30 years before the start of the current council’s term.”
Grobbelaar said the council was working toward undoing the legacy of the past.
“For example, council adopted a policy on Municipal Agricultural Land which has enabled the municipality to lease underutilised municipal agricultural land to emerging farmers from our region.
“Five lease agreements were entered into with upcoming farmers in 2019 and the next round of lease agreements will be signed later this year.”
Grobbelaar said the council had already expressed its concern over property leases.
The council requested the administration to do a detailed audit to make an informed and fair decision on the best way forward.
“These are legally binding contracts and cannot be cancelled unilaterally.
“There are some lease agreements on this list that are already no longer in existence,” Grobbelaar said.
The ANC said it disapproved of the tone of the language used by the municipality to defend the lease agreement.
Ruth Hall, a professor with the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, said the privatisation of public land around Stellenbosch was outrageous.
“Immediately before the elections in 1994, the municipality renewed 50-year leases on much of its municipal land,” Hall said.
“This is ‘commonage’ land that is meant to be used for the benefit of citizens. For years, farm workers, small-scale farmers, social movements and NGOs in the area have called on the municipality to cancel these leases and enter into democratic consultations on how the land can be better used – who needs it, and for what purposes.”
Hall said this had not happened.
“Instead, by leasing the land out cheaply, the Stellenbosch municipality is effectively subsidising private companies – at the expense of landless and homeless people.”
Hall argued that the ANC was not innocent as “ANC-ruled municipalities also lease out public land”.
Stellenbosch was, according to Hall, a good place to start to challenge and reverse the leasing of public land to companies.
“It would be important to hear what small-scale farmers, farmworkers, evicted farmworkers and residents of informal settlements in the Stellenbosch area would envisage as alternative uses of this public land,” Hall said.
The Legal Research Centre in Stellenbosch said the ANC’s stance on the matter was ironic because they tried for more than a decade to get the municipality and the department of rural development to support small-scale farmers on municipal land, with the department never giving the funding promised for years.
“That was explicitly to unlock this land,” said the centre’s Wilmien Wicomb.
Municipal land must be made available for redistribution urgently.
“The problem remains that municipalities argue that land reform is not part of their constitutional mandate and, therefore, they can’t make municipal land available for redistribution,” Wicomb said.
The Women on Farms Project (WFP) in Stellenbosch said it was appalled by the continued long-term leases to white farmers.
“They are not willing to release municipal land for land redistribution to farmworkers who through generations helped to develop these farms,” said the WFP’s Carmen Louw.
“Farmers benefiting from these cheap leases continue to evict farm dwellers, especially widows, from these farms.”