Legal tussle over ownership of R1billion private game farm continues

The Land Court in Randburg has issued an urgent order to stop an annual general meeting over a disputed claim to the MalaMala game reserve near the Kruger National Park.

The urgent application was over a dispute that the meeting had been unlawfully called in addition to the fact that various parties were trying to separately hold other annual general meetings (AGMs).

At the heart of the issue is another matter over who owns the pricey land, which the government purchased for R1 billion in 2013 to restore it to the communities who had been removed from the land through racist policies of colonialism and apartheid.

In the meantime, there is an ongoing battle over various parties trying to hold an AGM on different dates to select a new executive committee.

After the land was restored, two communities - the Mhlanganisweni Community and the Mavhuraka Community – were merged into a new entity to take ownership of the MalaMala land, the N'Wandlamhari Communal Property Association (NCPA).

In addition to the alleged wrongful calling of the AGM, both communities are involved in a separate issue to separate themselves from the NCPA, which is a matter that will be heard later.

This main action seeks to effectively reverse the 2013 merger of the two communities so that only members of the Mhlanganisweni Community will benefit from the MalaMala land, or that only members of the Mavhuraka Community who demonstrate they were dispossessed from the MalaMala land can benefit from it.

The Mhlanganisweni Community contends the Mavhuraka never lodged a valid land claim and should therefore not benefit from the land. Litigation started in 2019.

In the meantime, no new executive committee has been elected, and no AGM to elect a new committee has been successfully held despite the fact that the NCPA’s constitution limits the term of any executive committee to three years.

In the ruling, the judge wrote that the “reasons depend on who you ask”. The NCPA and Mhlanganisweni community say they have tried to hold AGMs to consider the verification of the Mavhuraka Community and elect a new executive committee, but that these attempts have been disrupted by other members of the Mavhuraka Community.

There were attempts in February 2018, October 2019 and January 2020 to hold AGMs.

The Mavhuraka Community contends they have been excluded from decision-making and denied membership recognition.

The judge, in stating that “I do not wish to give the parties advice on how to solve their disputes” found that a meeting set to be held within days of the matter being heard, and two days after the ruling was handed down, had not been called in line with NCPA constitution.

As a result, the parties were interdicted from holding an AGM and told they can call a meeting as long as it complies with the relevant rules.

In the meantime, the judge wrote: “The main action will likely take years to finally resolve the substantive disputes. Must all sides just accept the stalemate until then? No.”

Instead, the ruling stated that “the parties are not powerless to move forward. The key point is this – they must move forward lawfully. Otherwise, whatever steps are taken are likely to cause further discord and are unlikely to resolve the present deadlock.”

IOL