Major wastes R45million on farms for husband

The mayor of a crumbling municipality - which suffers frequent water shortages - spent R45-million of unbudgeted council funds on seven farms in a neighbouring province. (from the Sunday Times)

Her husband was then put in charge of them.

The Sunday Times has established that the farms, bought last year, have since fallen into disrepair and are failing, despite a further R10.5-million being spent to keep them going.

Zoleka Capa - an ANC national executive committee member and the mayor of the OR Tambo district municipality in the Eastern Cape - this week confirmed attending the auction of the farms near Kokstad, in neighbouring KwaZulu-Natal. She bought the farms despite the fact that the municipality had not budgeted for them.

OR Tambo district municipality runs towns including Port St Johns and Mthatha. It boasts roads peppered with potholes, and suffers critical water shortages, frequent electricity blackouts and poor service delivery.

A task team set up by Capa's own party to probe municipal governance in the region is now demanding to know why the farms were bought without prior council approval, and has drafted a letter calling on parliament's public accounts watchdog, Scopa, to intervene.

The farms - 2600ha of prime agricultural land used for livestock production and growing crops like maize, potatoes and fruit - were bought in April 2008. Capa trumped an offer of R16-million by the Department of Land Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal with a bid of R25-million. Another R20-million was ploughed into the deal to buy vehicles, tractors, livestock and equipment on the properties.

Capa's husband, Ndumiso, who heads the agriculture section of the municipality's development agency Ntinga, was put in charge of running the farms with the intention of turning them into a profitable commercial venture.

But the farms were in a state of disarray when the Sunday Times visited this week:

* An apple farming project, which used to have a turnover of more than R1-million, has collapsed;
* Farm workers' homes are dilapidated;
* There is no office equipment, fences are falling apart and machinery lies in a state of disrepair;
* Bags of harvested maize lie discarded in a shed and there is no sign of a once-thriving poultry operation.

Asked about the state of the properties, previous owner Steve Wells said: "All I did was do business with the highest bidder. How they take care of the land and the welfare of the people who used to work for me is their business."

Bruce Kannemeyer, the municipal manager of OR Tambo, said this week that the R45-million was not budgeted for and no procurement processes had been followed "as (the farms) were bought through an auction".

He said, however, that the R10.5-million the municipality had injected into the project since the purchase had been budgeted for.

Ndumiso Capa said the farms were in trouble because "we were made to believe that most of the farming equipment was in working condition, but it was not".

"We understand that local farmers who wanted to buy this land are angry OR Tambo bought it. Hard luck. We will do our best to inject as much infrastructure (as possible) to make this thing work," he said.

Yolisa Xaba, a resident of Fort Gale in Mthatha, said this week she was shocked the municipality bought the farms when money needed to be spent on the provision of basic services.

Xaba said water shortages in Mthatha were so frequent that "if you don't have a tank as a reserve, you will go to work and school for days without water".

Buyelwa Sonjica, minister of water and environmental affairs, visited the province in July and declared OR Tambo's water services a disaster. The municipality has had to truck thousands of litres of water to at least 16 areas in the district.