INLSA

File Photo: Businessman and farmer, Gary Porritt.

A Drakensberg landowner says the Snowdon Farm Trust – which has links to businessman and farmer Gary Porritt – had taken an “aggressive approach” to obtain a route to its farms, when it already had access to them.

These were among the submissions made by Francois du Plessis in response to an application by Snowdon’s trustees to force landowners to give them permission to drive almost 2 000 cattle through their land to farms on the Lesotho border.

Snowdon, which Du Plessis referred to as “simply the alter ego of the Porritt family and specifically Gary Porritt”, owns the Berridale, Fair View, Bellevue and Constantia farms in the southern Drakensberg.

The trustees include Porritt’s wife Bernice, with their four children being the beneficiaries.

Snowdon claims in court papers that the farms could only be accessed via one route that ran through the privately owned Leydenburg and Beaumont farms.

It says it needs access to the farms to erect a mountain resort development on the border of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg world heritage site.

“However, without road access for two-wheel-drive vehicles to the hotel site... nothing can happen – including the environmental impact and other studies.”

It was therefore essential for Snowdon’s rights to pass through two neighbouring farms to be established in court.

The application was brought against Du Plessis, Ian Stanley Worrall, Don Ogilvie, Chestnut Hill Investments 113 and Dreamworld Investments 561. The latter four filed a single response.

Du Plessis said the order should be dismissed because Snowdon had confused him with someone else by citing him. While he had no objection to Snowdon using the route, he was concerned by the “aggressive approach adopted by the applicant to obtain a particular route to their farms”, when there was already access to their farms through Lesotho and there was also a cattle path running along the Eastern Cape boundary that linked one of the farms to a public road.

On behalf of the other parties, Marie Marcel Jean-Francois Talbot, director of Dreamworld, said that the Transport MEC should have been cited in the application as he was responsible for all provincial roads running over the respondents’ farms.

Talbot added that there were no roads leading to Snowdon’s farms over Beaumont, and seeking general access would involve the construction of a road, which would be “totally inappropriate”. Talbot said the Snowdon trustees had bought the properties without establishing rights of access.

“The introduction of the so-called mountain resort development was merely an afterthought, designed to bolster the applicants’ case now that they have no cattle on Berridale.

“Alternatively, this was the real, undisclosed reason for wanting access over the respondents’ properties.”

An interdict was granted against Du Plessis and the matter in respect of the others was adjourned until May.