Controversial columnist Paddy Hartdegen speaks his mind on the dangers of land invasions, the proper channels for land reform and the role of the upcoming elections in this regard.

From time to time I get a tiny pinprick of fear in my belly.

Fear is perhaps too strong a word.

Let's call it trepidation, concern, disenchantment because that's probably a bit more accurate. Why this concern, you might ask. Well, guess what, apart from low-cost housing projects being the target of a illegal land-grab occupation, in Mpumalanga last week a community invaded a range of farms and demanded they be allowed to occupy them.

Apparently a few years back, a 3,200 hectare farm in Nkomazi, near Malelane, was the focus of a land claim and the community were granted the land that was, at the time, being used to produce citrus, sugar cane and bananas.

Having been allocated the land, the community formed a trust fund – known as the Mjejane Trust – and it appointed a "strategic partner", Makhombo Farm Management, to run the farm. Makhombo was a joint venture company formed by members of the Lugelane Community and another organisation known as Umlimi Holdings.

As is so often the case, the members of the Trust – and the community at large – expected immediate profits and dividends from the farm management company. After all the farm was profitable when it was handed back to the community and why could it not maintain this profitability?

Of course, it didn't.

In fact, to date the farm management company has yet to make a profit and the community itself is yet to receive a single cent in dividends either. Umlimi blames a long and protracted government acquisition process for the fact that it has been unable to make a profit but that makes little or no sense because, before Umlimi were involved the farm was making a profit.

Gradually conditions on the farms got worse, resulting in its output being well below the regional average yields. Simple put, the profitable farm was no longer profitable.

How, I wondered, could that be? A few years back it was successfully farming sugar cane and fruit. Then along comes a new management team and it fails.

Umlimi blames the government for not giving it the financial assistance that was promised. Umlimi also claims that, over the years, R38m has been invested in the farms.

This just clouds the picture even more because the farms were running like clockwork until Umlimi and the Makhombo Farm Management got involved. Then, yields collapsed and the farms were operating at a loss. Something was wrong – very wrong.

Clearly, a lot of money was going somewhere – but exactly where is anyone's guess at this point in time.

The story doesn't end there though. Last week the community members, presumably sick of excuses from the management company and the trustees as well, invaded the farms. Instinctively, I support the community's notion of bad management and possible misuse of money. But this is no justification for a land invasion or for a vigilante approach that defies law, order and justice.

In a normal, functioning society, change would be achieved at a shareholders' (or community) meeting where a vote would be taken to get rid of the Trustees and appoint new management on the basis of majority rule.

If a less-than-normal vigilante-ism takes over, the community invades the land. That's wrong – and it's very worrying too.

The community action was illegal and, fortunately perhaps, the acting regional land claims commissioner, Tumi Seboka, stepped into the fray to calm the tempers and halt the invasion. Correctly, she got together with the trustees and Umlimi's representatives and set about trying to find a way to resolve the management issues in an attempt to get the farm operating properly.

Time will tell if this process works and if a change in management will return the farms to profitability.

What fills me with trepidation is two-fold: The land invasion itself and the fact that the community believes it has a right take the law into its own hands by moving onto the farms rather than use the democratic processes – such as courts, Trustee meetings and the like – to affect change.

If any community invades any property and is left in control of this property then the rule of law has collapsed.

Farm invasions have brought Zimbabwe to its knees and destablised a once-productive country. Farm invasions in Kenya in the sixties almost smashed that country too as did the invasions in neighbouring Mozambique in the seventies when the Portuguese colonialists fled to South Africa with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Precisely the same picture emerged in Angola, where colonialist farmers and shopkeepers packed all their goods onto the back of a bakkie and headed for Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

This week we are due to see a new government being elected – or should I say the same African Nationalist Congress (ANC) government with new faces and a new President. Of course the voters – like the Nkomasi community – will put their chosen representatives back into power.

Unlike the trustees in Nkomasi, though, I do hope that the chosen government representatives will set about trying to build a nation that will be better for all of us. I also hope that some effective opposition will prevent a two-majority being won by the ruling party.

But most of all I hope that sense continues to prevail and that incidents that lead to farm invasions, land invasions and housing project land grabs will remain illegal and that the elected government will throw the full force of the law behind those vigilante groups that take the law into their own hands.

But are we at a point when land grabs may become a part of the South African canvas?

I sincerely hope not – just as I sincerely do hope that every voter in this country will use his or her vote to determine our future and, at the same time, uphold democracy, law and order.

For democracy, law and order is something that must not be forsaken.

Not now or at any time in the future.

*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and don't pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddyhar@telkomsa.net.

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