Spent an interesting day at a land reform project near Lydenburg. The farm was acquired 10 years ago at a cost of R20 million, half of which was loaned from the land bank. About 1800 ha arable land of which about 285 ha is under irrigation.
The project got off to a bad start as the purchase price did not include the farming equipment or livestock. Even the dairy equipment, including the milking sheds, and other buildings were removed.
What’s interesting is that despite the setbacks and some internal instability it’s working. The trust is farming itself, it employs a farm manager, the dairy is running again, they have a dairy herd and are growing grain crops including wheat under centre pivots.
Generating about R6 million per year of which R1 million goes to the 254 beneficiaries the rest to keep the farm going and interest payments to the Land Bank. They take short term loans to finance planting, which they pay back at harvest time. They employ about 60 beneficiaries.
The biggest challenge is the Land Bank debt which has climbed to over R35 million, but considering the value of underlying asset this is not overwhelming. I was hugely impressed by the quality of the trust leadership.
It’s a rare success story, even rarer because they are farming themselves. Most big land reform entities lease their land to big commercial farmers and live off the rental and sometimes a profit share. This group is doing it on their own.
Perhaps the biggest reason for their success is a homogeneous community, most beneficiaries used to work for the previous owner and they know each other. Often the DRDLR just lumps people together. There are good relations between the trustees and beneficiaries, there is trust.
I see great things ahead.
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Our trade union client gets good information that Samancor Chrome is engaged in large scale transfer pricing. They sell chrome that they mine in SA to a related offshore company at a heavy discount to the market price. They do so to lower their profit in SA and their taxes.
This is bad news for the unions members who have shares in the company through a worker empowerment trust set up by the company as part of its BEE obligations. The trust gets a reduced dividend and workers get a smaller distribution.
The Union calls upon Samancor Ito Section 165 of the Companies Act to investigate the allegations and to recover the moneys lost through the transfer pricing scheme. Samancor appoints an audit firm to do the investigation.
This is how SANRAl moves rural people in Pondoland to make way for their grand vanity project, the N2 greenfields freeway along the Transkei Wild Coast. You know the one, it’s a toll road with the highest bridges in the world built and designed to facilitate dune strip mining.
But perhaps the first thing is to explain how they should move them. Because SANRAL uses foreign (Chinese) contractors and uses World Bank money it is obliged to subscribe to IFC social and environmental standards. These require that SANRAl prepare a RAP.
A Relocation Action Plan requires that SANRAl consider the social and economic consequences of its forced displacement on the people it plans to move. Where will they be moved to? The minimum housing standards that will apply, compensation and provision of alternative livelihoods
Well, that was a very impressive and dignified response by Israel. The confidence we had coming out of yesterday’s hearing has pretty much evaporated. It does appear that SA’s case was light on hard evidence.
The evidence of genocidal intent in the form of statements by leaders is much less impactful when placed in context and countered with other statements, orders and directives requiring the Israeli military to respect the rules of war. We missed Israel’s humanitarian initiatives.
Our reliance on evidence of massive civilian casualties and damage to property and infrastructure, to prove intent, is not that telling in circumstances where we are unable to show that the harm and damage would have been any less, if Israel had complied with the rule of law.
Let’s clear up some of the common misunderstandings about what South Africa’s complaint is about. 1. Israel’s contention that Hamas is an antisemitic terrorist organisation with a genocidal intent, is not in issue. 2. The scale and nature of the Oct 7 atrocity is not in issue.
3. Israel’s right to self defense and its right to wage war against Hamas in order to destroy for good, its capacity to attack Israel and its people and to free the hostages is not in issue.
What is in issue is the manner in and intention with which Israel is conducting that war.
South Africa contends that based on the utterances of senior Israeli political and military leaders and the conduct of its military forces in Gaza that it is clear that Israel’s strategy to destroy Hamas is to target the civilian population of Gaza and to punish them.
Consulted with a client today. His experience is representative of how SOE’s work.
Telkom is rolling out fibre in some townships in Gauteng. It appointed a main contractor but because the contractor lacks local influence, it insists on the use of a local subcontractor.
The main contractor does the buying and pays the subcontractor. The main contractor gets 30% of the contract value, the subcontractor gets 70%. The work goes well till other local political players decide to muscle in. They start destroying the installed fibre infrastructure.
The Telkom contract manager tells the main contractor he must split the subcontracting work between all those demanding a share of the subcontracting work. My client, the subcontractor refuses to agree to the splitting of his sub contract.
Got a letter today from SASOL’s attorneys, the estimable firm of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr. My client is a farmer with a farm downstream from one of SASOL’s waste water dams, known as Dam F. Dam F was built in the 80’s to accommodate toxic waste water from the coal mines.
Dam F was designed to leak waste water. The clay was carefully removed to build the dam wall exposing the weathered dolorite, that constitutes the floor of the dam, which leaks like a seive. It’s a cunning way to leach polluted waste water into the ground water.
This is much cheaper than treating the water or evaporating it. From Dam F the waste water flows into the ground water and eventually surfaces in the dams in the stream flowing through my clients property. His animals drink the waste water and get sick and die.