A farming trust in the Northern Cape has asked the Public Protector to investigate possible fraud, mismanagement and corruption at the provincial department of agriculture.
Members of the Nomalanga Trust have accused department officials of siphoning off 15-million-rand, which was meant to go towards a farm bought by the department for the trust.
In 2007, the department of agriculture spent R8.5-million to buy a profitable grape farm, and appointed a trust of local people to run it.
A decade later, farming has come to a halt, no grapes or raisins are being harvested and 75 hectares of farming land stands fallow.
This has left beneficiaries of the trust, who live on the farm with no water, electricity or sanitation and little prospects of successful farming. They believe that the state of the farm is allegedly due to the department’s failure….
Agriculture department spokesperson, Phemelo Manankong, says they will wait for the Public Protector’s report.
Nomalanga Trust chairperson, Aron Johnson, says when he became chairperson of the trust in 2016, he discovered that money coming into the farm’s account was being withdrawn without the trust’s knowledge.
In the video below, Aron Johnson, chairperson of the Nomalanga Trust, explains what happened and why they are looking to the public protector for help:
