Three Beaufort West farmers call for agriculture minister and officials to be jailed for contempt of court

Three Beaufort West sheep farmers – left frustrated by land redistribution officials’ alleged failure to comply with a court order to restore possession of their land – said on Thursday they would ask the court to jail the offending parties if they are found guilty of contempt of court.

The farmers, Joshua Bezuidenhout, his brother Herold Bezuidenhout and Jan Bergh were the beneficiaries of a land restitution deal. After receiving access to the land, they built up an award-winning wool co-op, Nuveld Farming Empowerment Enterprises. Other beneficiaries were also given the opportunity to farm but they soon abandoned the effort.

Then, in January and February 2024, the government grabbed two farms the company had been farming since 2017. Officials cut their locks and replaced them with others. They then gave access to the land to some of the beneficiaries who had since walked away.

The three farmers, represented by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), then went to court and obtained an order on 4 March 2024 ordering the minister and the officials, as well as two former beneficiaries who had been placed on the farms by the department, to restore possession of the land to the Nuveld farmers. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: Award-winning Karoo wool farmers win battle to have farms returned after government locked them out

“Despite repeated requests by the farmers and their attorneys to get the department, the officials, and the former beneficiaries to abide by the order, the minister and the department had taken no reasonable steps to abide by the order, and the two people remain on the farms,” a statement released by the LRC reads.

As a result, lawyers for the farmers have now asked the court to jail those found to be in contempt.

In 2009, the then Department of Rural Development and Land Reform allocated five farms in the Beaufort West district, collectively known as Plateau Farm, to more than 80 beneficiaries as part of its land reform programme. The three Nuveld farmers were among these beneficiaries. 

They are the children of former farm workers in the Beaufort West area. Their sheep farming operations became highly successful, and in 2020 and again in 2023, their wool obtained the highest average price for the region at the national wool auction in Gqeberha. 

When the leases that were in place expired, the Nuveld farmers were appointed caretakers of the farms pending the finalisation of a 30-year lease.

They were recommended by the National Land Acquisition and Allocation Control Committee as the preferred candidates for the lease.

Despite this recommendation, the Acting Chief Director: Western Cape Provincial Shared Services, decided in September 2020 not to award the lease to Nuveld. The department refused to disclose the reason to the three farmers.

On 4 April 2023, the farmers applied to the Western Cape Division of the High Court to review and set aside the decision.

While the case was pending, however, in January and February 2024, the department allocated two parts of Plateau Farm to former beneficiaries who had already left the farm. This was without any official application being filed.

On 4 March 2024, the Nuveld farmers approached the high court to overturn this decision and restore their possession of Plateau Farm.

Granting the order, Judge Gayaat Salie said in her ruling: “It is evident that onward allocation by the state respondents would mean that the decision would be implemented in the same manner as had been done in the manner herein. This would undermine the pending review proceedings. Accordingly, this would be an exceptional circumstance where the threatened and intended actions (namely, future spoliations) by the state respondents must be curtailed so as to ensure that the subject matter forming the basis of the pending review does not become moot, undermined or interfered with which would otherwise most probably hamper the review Court from making a determination in the review proceedings.”

In May 2024, two more people moved onto another portion of the farm, and a court order to remove them was also sought.

In papers, the minister and the department argued that the order did not require them to take any steps to remove the former beneficiaries from the farms other than to acknowledge that the allocations were unlawful, despite admitting that they had unlawfully provided them with consent to move onto the farms and had taken steps to place them on the farms. 

Lawyers for the former beneficiaries argued that the order did not mean that they had to vacate the farms and that their removal would constitute an eviction in terms of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act. They argued that they had a fiduciary duty as members of their respective family trusts to remain on the land.

Should the court find in favour of the applicants, the minister and the officials, as well as the former beneficiaries, will have to appear in court in person to explain why they should not be jailed for contempt of court, the LRC statement continues.

Judgment has been reserved until next week.

Joshua Bezuidenhout told the court that he and his fellow Nuveld directors were left devastated by the department’s actions.

He said he feared for the safety of some of his sheep as one of the new “farmers” installed by the department, Hendrik Booysen, has full access to the Nuveld flocks and has openly threatened, in the presence of Jan Arries and another Nuveld employee, “slaughter” some of the sheep as compensation for the animals he claims were stolen from him. 

Booysen only recently moved back to the farm after not having lived there for the past six years.

Bezuidenhout added that while Booysen claims a right to live there as his family trust was a beneficiary of one of the lapsed leases, his relatives have confirmed that the trust has not authorised him to do so.

He added that when Booysen left the farm several years ago, he left his livestock behind. While the Nuveld farmers took care of them, the goats had become “completely wild.”

“So, while there are a handful of animals Mr Booysen left on the farm, that is because he abandoned them here when he left six years ago. It is difficult to believe his sudden urge to look after these animals after leaving them to the elements for years. 

“Mr Booysen says that he or his trust had 400 sheep on the farm and 78 goats when he left the farm. In his answering affidavit in the spoliation application, he claimed that he had 800 sheep on the farm when he left. His version has now changed dramatically, but it is still untrue. He did not leave anything other than 10 goats, three cattle and a horse when he left,” Bezuidenhout said.

He added that Booysen tried to open a case of stock theft against them on the basis that his three cattle would have multiplied to 33 by now.

Bezuidenhout said they were called in for an interview with the police and when Booysen was asked to provide proof that he had 33 cattle, he said it was his “estimation of how many cattle he thinks there should be.”

Bezuidenhout said a police captain then explained to Booysen that he could not make a case of theft of animals that he did not know ever existed. The investigation was closed. 

“It is a bald-faced lie from Mr Booysen to suggest that he had 400 sheep and 78 goats on Dassiesfontein when he left there in 2018. The quarterly reports filed to the department from 2017 up until today recorded precisely what was on the farm,” Bezuidenhout added.

He said it was not true that they had forced Booysen to leave the farm, as he claimed.

“The lease agreements of all the trusts came to an end in 2017 and everyone was required to leave. Nuveld applied to stay as caretaker until the farm was advertised for a long-term lease agreement and that was granted.”

Lubabalo Mbekeni, the department’s director responsible for land acquisitions in the Western Cape, said that since the court order was issued in March, they had not allocated any further portions of the farm. 

He said they have fully complied with the court order, and that his department has not agreed to or consented to the continued occupation of the property by the families who moved there in recent months.

Mbekeni added that it was not their job to enforce court orders and that the Bezuidenhout brothers should ask the Sheriff to do so.

“In the review application, in addition to an order setting aside the refusal to grant Nuveld the 30-year lease, the applicants seek extremely far-reaching relief in relation to the State’s land reform policies. This has grave implications for the department and requires far-reaching evidence, including expert evidence, in order to respond properly to the applicants.” 

Mbekeni admitted that his department had provided farming implements to one of the new farmers, Lucy Nduku, who had been installed on one of the farms under the Bezuidenhouts’ control. 

“As far as I have been able to determine, [another official] was assisting Ms Nduku in a situation of desperate need after she requested the department’s assistance to feed her family. Ms Nduku is a widow and sole breadwinner; she looks after her family of 11.”

He said they provided implements to Nduku so she could plant vegetables.

Mbekeni said the department now “accepts that as well-intentioned as such assistance was, it may not have been prudent in the circumstances” and that it would not be repeated. DM