Farm Justice, Land Still Denied

By CHRIS MAKHAYE

A man inspect the home of Sabatha Hadebe, which was allegedly bulldozed by two white farmers. The local court found the farmers not guilty.

ON a warm September afternoon in 2023, Dumisani Phakathi, a 44‑year‑old farm dweller from Mamokgalieskraal near Brits, walked to fetch water from a communal furrow. He never made it back to his homestead on the farm.

Three farmers — Jaco Wessels Kemp, Louise Coetzee, and Gert Frederik van der Westhuizen — dragged him into a storage shed and beat him to death, later stuffing his body into refuse bags.

Last month, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria sentenced the men to life imprisonment. The judge called the killing “cruel, racially motivated and without justification,” and declared them unfit to possess firearms.

The lawyers of the three farmers have already signalled that they are going to appeal their convictions and sentences.

But the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) welcomed the outcome, saying it showed one of the rare cases where there has been accountability for violent crimes against vulnerable communities.

A Region Haunted by Violence

Mamokgalieskraal is a farming settlement dotted with chicken farms, maize fields and citrus orchards, but also with the modest homes of farm dwellers who live without secure tenure. Less than 50 kilometres away from Mamokgalieskraal lies Nomandien, farming community near the northern KZN town of Newcastle. The area has become one of the boiling hotspots in the fraught relationship between farmers and farm dwellers.

On 30 August 2020, Nomandien was shaken by the brutal murder of Glenn Rafferty and his wife Vida, who were ambushed and killed as they returned home, even their dog shot dead in the attack. The killings prompted widespread outrage, intensified fears about rural crime, and drew global attention to violence on South African farms. Even US President Donald Trump cited the incident to make his case for what he termed “a genocide against white farmers in South Africa”.

The two suspects convicted in the Rafferty murder case were Siyabonga Dlamini and Bongani Mchunu, who were both sentenced to life imprisonment for the attacks and murders of the Raffertys and their dog.

Farm dwellers laments

One of Nomandien residents is Smokey Nkosi, a 47‑year‑old activist whose family has lived on a 279‑hectare farm for five generations, claimed 40 hectares in 2000 but has seen no progress in 25 years. She described the daily reality of farm dwellers in stark terms:

“We feel like nobody cares for us. We are enduring poverty, insecurity and constant threats of eviction. Government moves swiftly when it comes to land for the elite, but very slowly for the most vulnerable. We are treated as if we don’t matter, even though our families have lived and worked on these farms for generations.”

To illustrate her point, she pointed to one of her neighbours, the Hadebe family, whose house was bulldozed by two farmers, who stated that the family did not have the permission to build permanent structure on the farmland.

“The two farmers were escourted by the security company and the police when they did this. The family lost everything and when they went to open the case with the police, nothing was done because the farmers were found not guilty due to lack of evidence. That is why farmers act with impunity because they know that nothing will happen against them,” Nkosi said.

Other farm-dwellers and activists echoed these and other violations in the farms as their daily experiences.

Land Reform Promises and Failures

Under apartheid laws such as the 1913 Natives Land Act, black South Africans were confined to just 13% of the land, while white farmers controlled the rest. Since 1994, government pledged to redistribute 30% of agricultural land to black South Africans. By 2025, however, only about 10–12% had been transferred, far short of targets.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent handover of land and title deeds in Umzimkhulu was celebrated, but farm dwellers ask why similar urgency is not applied to their claims.

Civil society voices, including Siyabonga Sithole of the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA), stress that relations between farmers and farm dwellers remain strained.

“The history is difficult — power is skewed, farmers have access to resources, while farm dwellers live in abject poverty and struggle to access basic services. Where justice is done, like in the Phakathi case, we applaud the NPA. We hope it will deter others who act with impunity.”

Studies

Recent academic studies back concerns by farm dwellers and land activists. Research by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) has shown that land reform programmes often benefit politically connected elites, while farm dwellers remain excluded and insecure.

Another study PLAAS, called Elite Capture in Land Redistribution conducted by researchers Farai Mtero, Nkanyiso Gumede, and Katlego Ramantsima and examined 62 farms across five provinces, found that government land policies — particularly the State Land Lease and Disposal Policy (SLLDP) — tend to favour wealthier, better‑connected individuals, often sidelining poor farm dwellers. The study argues that redistribution has been skewed toward elites, reinforcing inequality rather than dismantling it.

Phakathi’s murder is a reminder that justice in the courtroom is often not enough. Until farm dwellers share in land, dignity and security, South Africa’s promise of reform will remain unfinished. TQ