Farm murder: squatters wanted to build school
January 13 2007

Illegal squatters on a KwaZulu-Natal citrus orchard near Melmoth where a farm manager was bludgeoned to death had applied to the province's traditional affairs department for permission to build a school, it emerged on Saturday.

Spokesman for the KwaZulu-Natal department of local government, housing and traditional affairs Lennox Mabaso said: "Our people told them this is private land therefore you cannot build a school."

He said an official from the department in Ulundi went to the New Venture Farm and showed the squatters where the boundaries between the Ingonyama Trust land and the farm were located on December 11.

Ingonyama Trust land is land that was administered by the Government of KwaZulu-Natal during the apartheid era and transferred to the trust after 1994.

Any permission to build on Trust land requires a Permission To Occupy (PTO).

Mabaso said that PTO was not granted for the school because the disputed land on New Venture Farm was not Ingonyama Trust land. "People were not satisfied," said Mabaso.

He said the department referred the matter to the department of land affairs.

Earlier this week Vela Mngwengwe, the acting chief director for land affairs in KwaZulu-Natal, said: "The land in dispute is in fact commercial land."

Police have been deployed to keep guard on the New Venture Farm in the Nkwaleni area between Melmoth and Eshowe where Kenneth Lionel Eva was bludgeoned to death with knobkerries on Tuesday. Eva had attended a meeting on the land when the attack took place.

On Saturday, police Captain Vusi Mbatha that said "additional" officers had been deployed. "We cannot say how long they will be deployed. We are monitoring the situation."

Meanwhile, the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (Kwanalu) has urged the government to speed up the resolution of land issues.

In a statement released on Friday, the Kwanalu said: "It seems to us that this incident, in its brutality, has taken place in the context of heightened rhetoric relating to the land reform issue and further illustrates the need for an expeditious conclusion to the processing or all outstanding Restitution and Tenancy related claims."

"A call is therefore issued for the reform of the agricultural sector to be a consequence of intense and well meaning dialogue between all players without frustrations flowing over into incitements to harmful and criminal actions."

Staff at New Venture farm, which primarily produces grape fruit for export, hailed Eva as "a good man" who solved their problems while squatters described him as a "racist".

Jabu Mtshali, 36, the head of security at the farm who discovered Eva's battered body, said: "He was a good guy on my side.

"He was not a guy to say I'm a big boss and not listen to your plans. He was only here a few months. My heart is very sore because we lost a good guy."

John Kunene, 43, who work's in the orchard's pack house said: "He was the same like a priest. You could go to him with a problem. I hope our next manager will be like him."

However, headman for the people occupying the disputed land, Mhlangabezeni Zulu, said Eva was a racist. "Maybe now the government will solve the problem because a white man has died. When black people are abused nobody speaks about it, but when a white person is killed it becomes a big story and it is reported on," he said.

He accused the farm owner, Mark Chennells of firing local people and "hiring foreigners".

Eva's brother-in-law, Wilfred Cameron-Dow, said the family had "very little to say".

He said: "He (Eva) was never an agressive person. He was a person of dialogue. Apart from that the family has very little to say. The family will await the outcome of the investigation."