It looks like we’re up and running on the land expropriation front – at least with regards where price negotiations with landowners have hit a brick wall.

First on the chopping block looks to be two game farms in Limpopo, who may well be the first properties that will be expropriated without following a court process.

The owners of the game farms have been disputing the validity of the claims made against their property, saying the government’s R20 million evaluation falls far short of the R200 million they want.

Via News24, here’s the latest:

A letter written to Akkerland Boerdery, owners of a luxury hunting farm in Makhado in Limpopo, read in part: “Notice is hereby given that a terrain inspection will be held on the farms on April 5 2018 at 10am in order to conduct an audit of the assets and a handover of the farm’s keys to the state.”

…While government is willing to pay for the land, the Akkerland case comes as the ANC’s top structures have decided over the past weeks that government must urgently proceed with test cases in order to test the concept of expropriation without compensation.

[Mashile Mokono, head of the land reform office in the ministry of rural development and land reform] emphasised that there was no talk of expropriation without compensation, but that the courts would have to give clarity on what constitutes “just and equitable” compensation.

When one party is after R200 million, and the offer sits at R20 million, there would seem to be some distance between what is deemed “just and equitable”.

The Musekwa tribe actually lodged a claim against the Akkerland Boerdery back in 1996:

Akkerland has obtained an urgent interdict in the Land Claims Court to prevent its owners’ eviction from the farms. The interdict is valid until a court has ruled on the matter. The department is opposing the court application.

Annelize Crosby, legal adviser of agricultural body AgriSA, expressed concern about the Akkerland case, saying that the organisation was only aware of one other case where a land claim dispute had resulted in expropriation, and that was after the Land Claims Court had ordered it in 1997.

“What makes the Akkerland case unique is that they apparently were not given the opportunity to first dispute the claim in court, as the law requires,” she said.

A spokesperson for the department of land reform said that section 42E of the law “makes provision for the minister to intervene to purchase, acquire or expropriate property for the purpose of land reform”.

According to court papers in the Akkerland case, a “notice of intention to expropriate” was sent to the owners in October last year. The owners made representations in which they disputed the validity of the claim and the proposed amount of compensation…

Theon Smith, Akkerland’s attorney, confirmed that they were disputing the price that government had offered for the farms, but also the Musekwa community’s claim to the farm.

Smith said the upsetting part of his client’s case was the fact that the minister ignored legislation that requires Akkerland’s owners to be given an opportunity to make their case in court.

Side note – you want some quality father/son hunting time? The Akkerland Hunting website says they’re your guys:

According to some evaluations, the R200 million that Akkerland’s owners might be a touch too lofty. A government-hired evaluator put the value at R20,75 million back in 2015, but Akkerland’s owners have hired evaluators of their own.

They say a 2011 valuation came out at R200 million, although other correspondence submitted to court says they received a R50 million valuation in the same year.

Attorney Smith chose not to comment on the difference in those figures.

I suppose we now wait and see what happens with that urgent interdict in the Land Claims Court. The interdict is valid until a court has ruled on the matter, but this might be one of the first cases in which the state tests the letter of the law.

[source:news24]