Johannesburg - A troubled community farming group has managed to free itself from an apparently dubious contract under which hundreds of hectares of its agricultural land were rented out.
The Mawewe Communal Property Association (MCPA), based in Mpumalanga’s Nkomazi region and steered by the Mkhatshwa Royal Family, triumphed at the high court against Mathonolo Construction group on Friday.
Th company belonged to royal family member, Happy Mkhatshwa.
According to the ruling Judge Brian Mashile delivered on Friday at the Mpumalanga High Court, Mkhatshwa represented the MCPA as its chairperson and Mathonolo as its sole director when the two entities concluded a lease agreement on March 14 in 2018.
Under the lease, three of the MCPA farms were rented to Mathonolo for 35 years.
RCL Foods, Sugar and Milling was cited as a respondent that stood to be affected by the outcome of the litigation. The agreement stipulated that rent would be charged at R3500 per hectare of the cultivated land per annum.
The MCPA presided over lucrative agricultural and mining land restored to original African owners as part of the land restitution programme.
Some of the association’s notable ventures were Mawecro, which was described as a “highly successful” sugar cane and banana farming project in Komatipoort.
The MCPA partnered with Crookes Brothers SA, the famed sugar cane farmers in Mawecro.
But the Mkhatshwa Royal Family was dogged by a chieftainship squabble that has reportedly claimed seven lives since 2018.
The squabble in turn led to Chief Khulile Mkhatshwa and her mother Indlovukati LaMbokazi resorting to courts to argue that the MCPA was hijacked by rogues, City Press reported last year.
The association was placed under administration in March last year, a move that appears to have brought the Mathonolo contract into the spotlight.
Administrators Etienne Jacques Naude, Johannes Petrus Koekemoer, Johannes Loodwyk Bouwer and Justice Van Wyk, dragged Mathonolo to court last year. Judge Mashile’s judgment indicated that the administrators initially sought an order declaring the lease agreement a sham, and null and void.
But they abandoned the “sham” claim during proceedings in favour of a declaration that the Mathonolo lease was cancelled lawfully.
The grounds for cancellation of Mathonolo’s lease was failure to pay rent, the administrators told Judge Mashile. Mathonolo disputed this, submitting two amounts it said had been paid to the MCPA since 2018.
These were R9 million and R16.7m, payments which it said constituted loans to the MCPA and early payment of rental.
Judge Mashile found against Mathonolo on grounds that it failed to provide evidence for the payments.
“Mathonolo should have done more instead of simply throwing around different amounts claiming to have been paid by it,” Judge Mashile said.
“On the evidence before this court I am unable to find that Mathonolo has discharged its rental obligations arising in terms of the lease agreement. As such, I am obliged to find for the applicants.
“The lease agreement between the MCPA and Mathonolo is declared to have been lawfully cancelled by the MCPA. Mathonolo is directed to pay the costs of the applicants.”
The Star