Municipal government fraud: : R2,9m European Union funded and highly productive Broederstroomdrift fruit farm is a total flop.
'MUNICIPAL FARM LIES ABANDONEDD'
LETABA HERALD, TZANEEN: 12 march 2015: South Africa: http://www.calameo.com/read/000706740dac1b7e1c601
A FARM bought by the Mopani District Municipality for R2,9 million from the Land Bank in 2007 to empower youth Agricultural Cooperatives lies abandoned outside Tzaneen.
The previously productive fruit farm, Moshupatsela, situated at Broederstroomdrift has become overgrown with weeds and it has derelict and ransacked farmhouses and packing sheds.
Farming equipment and other facilities at the farm has been destroyed.
About 81 families who are related to former farm-workers of the previous owner are still living there and refuse to leave: they have no place to go and were born there.
The government owners - Mopani District Municipality - have destroyed the houses of these 81 families with a court order.
However they are still squatting there - demanding that the municipality must give them alternative housing (which is required by law).
Eventually the workers' families simply rebuilt their shacks.
There's no farming going on: the palisade fencing erected by the municipality to keep the squatters out of the farm has been cut open.
After the farm was purchased, the former executive mayor of Mopani District Municipality, Humphrey Mokgobi said "a feasibility study was conducted on the farm and that the previous owner's orchard, the vegetable production, dried fruit, juice and atchar production "were identified as four key business initiatives."
So the project was planning to 'bring together four youth-agricultural cooperatives from around Mopani" and they 'created 16 jobs for farm workers' - and promised 'hundreds more job opportunities'.
Then the project was abandoned.
The R800 000 funding the municipality received from the European Union which was supposed to create a fresh produce market at Nkowakowa industrial area somehow disappeared into the sands of time.
This marked had to create 41 permanent jobs and "hundreds more indirectly."
“Not only had the project failed, but it had also cost jobs,” said one of the former employees, Thomas Khosa.
He said the farmwhen it was owned by the white farmer, "used to employ hundreds of people and even more during harvesting time".
Now there's no jobs since the municipality abandoned the farm three years ago.
Municipal spokesman Tumelo Malaka "promised to comment after speaking to his superiors"but had not done so at the time of going to press.
LETABA HERALD MARCH 6 2015 - READ:
http://www.calameo.com/read/000706740dac1b7e1c601![]()
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