Didiza misses deadline – DA to report the Cloete farm issue to the Human Rights Commission
8 March 2021
Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Thoko Didiza, has missed the deadline to publish the report into an investigation that was supposedly conducted by her Department on the circumstances that led to the issuance of an eviction order against Mr Ivan Cloete, on his Colenso farm in Darling. Didiza had made an undertaking to release the report by the end of February 2021.
Having always maintained the position that the victimisation of Cloete was an infringement on his rights as a famer, the DA will be reporting his unfair treatment by the Department to the South Africa Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). After bundling its own processes and shunting Cloete from one farm to another, the Department took the unprecedented step to try and drive Cloete completely out of farming by threatening him with an eviction order.
By its own admission, the Department may have violated a lease agreement it had with Mr Cloete under the land reform programme. In a radio interview last month, the Deputy Minister of DALRRD, McebisiSkwatsha, admitted that the Department may have flouted the 30 year lease agreement it has with Mr Cloete through administrative bundling.
The question that arises is why the Department proceeded to invite fresh new applications on a farm in which it already had an active lease agreement in place. By violating the terms of the lease agreement it had with Mr Cloete, the process that the Department pursued to allocate the farm to new occupants became procedurally and administratively flawed, rendering it unenforceable.