1 in 4 land claims ‘hijacked’ as KZN farmer fights eviction
· Citizen
KwaZulu-Natal livestock farmer Vuyani Zigana is the face of a land restitution scheme which is failing those it is meant to help – with at least one in four land claims being hijacked by corrupt officials or collapsing in community disarray.
Zigana is facing eviction from a piece of land from which he has been operating since 2022, allegedly to make way for a “connected” individual.
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Eviction notice and disputed land rights
He was ordered to vacate two properties, Lease Unit 1 of Melville Park No. 32 ES and Portion 1 of the farm Bersheba No. 38 ES, measuring some 38 hectares, by 20 March.
The notice, issued on 23 February by the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development, classifies his occupation as “illegal”.
The order was signed by the department’s KwaZulu-Natal director of property management, Zama Molefe, and copied to senior officials responsible for land acquisition and regional services.
As Zigana geared up for a fight this week, social media debates reignited around how “the elite” had been hijacking the land reform process across the country.
Land claims ‘hijacked’
Constitution First reposted on X a video of advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, where he said one in four land claims hijacked came from a report published by the Special Investigating Unit.
He said in the Eastern Cape, “82% of those who are benefitting from a distribution of farm land programme are economically powerful and politically connected individuals, rather than farmworkers or the rural poor”.
He told a panel discussion: “Beneficiaries of land reform are the politically connected or have families working there. They are not real farmers…they do part-time farming. They may go there on weekends to throw big parties…25% of all land claims are corrupt. The figures are just astonishing.”
He said if you have a country as corrupt as SA, it was inevitable that an asset as important is land would also be affected by corruption.
That is cold comfort for Zigana, who vowed: “I am not going anywhere…I have been through this before and it nearly ended me.”
Legal battles and devastating losses
Detailing his first similar nightmare, he said in 2012 he entered into a caretaker agreement with the department to use the farm for his livestock.
He operated in relative peace until June 2018 when he started hearing rumours that the department had advertised for a new caretaker to take over the farm.
“I indeed saw the advert and I applied but never heard anything from the department. I was later told the process was withdrawn,” Zigana said.
In June 2019, he received a call from a departmental official informing him that he was bringing in a new caretaker.
At the time, he had 117 head of cattle and asked where he was expected to take his livestock, but he was told to plan.
“I approached the court but had to abandon the case after a lawyer disappeared with my money. In October 2019, I was told my livestock would be impounded if I did not remove them from the farm,” he said.
In December, his cattle, now numbering about 95 as he had to sell some to cover his legal fees, as well as 44 ewes and rams and five horses, were ultimately impounded and placed at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Kokstad.
Intervention and continued hardship
He said that in the period of three months that his livestock was impounded, he lost almost half of everything to death due to alleged neglect.
“The SPCA demanded R375 000 for storage and took me to court… we ultimately reached a settlement and I paid R85 000. The SPCA took nine Bonsmara bulls to settle the debt,” Zigana said.
Through the intervention of another farmer and Southern African Agri Initiative, which confirmed Zigana was formally placed on the land under a caretaking arrangement, following a forensic investigation into his earlier eviction from the Nooitgedacht farm in 2019, the then minister of agriculture, land reform and rural development, Thoko Didiza, issued a letter paving way for him to be allocated a farm.
Ongoing uncertainty and unanswered questions
He, however, said for the four months that his livestock was at the farm, many died due to injuries as the area was mountainous.
Zigana was then allocated the farm from which he is now being evicted. The situation has placed significant strain on his family and farming operations, on which he employs two people.
“I cannot believe this is happening to me again. I have decided that I am not going anywhere,” he said.
A report by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies highlighted evidence that land redistribution processes are being skewed toward well-off beneficiaries with the capacity to operate large-scale commercial farms.
Molefe had not replied to questions at the time of publishing.