Judge postpones Russian farm lease lawsuit, gives sellers chance to be heard

The former owners of four farms sold to Namibia’s government in 2018 must be given an opportunity to participate in a lawsuit about the lease of the land to a Russian-owned company for 99 years.

This was ordered by judge Orben Sibeya in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

Sibeya made the order after informing lawyers involved in a case about the lease of the farms that his judgement in the matter has been written, but that he first wants the former owners of the farms to indicate if they want to make an input in the case before the judgement is delivered.

Sibeya’s judgement was scheduled to be delivered yesterday, but the case has instead been postponed to 12 November for a status hearing.

In the meantime, the former farm owners should indicate by 4 November if they want to participate in the court proceedings about the lease of the land they sold.

The Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) is asking the court to set aside the decision of the government and former minister of land reform Utoni Nujoma to lease the farms to the company Comsar Properties, owned by Russian citizen Rashid Sardarov.

PDM is also asking the court to set aside the written permission Nujoma gave to Comsar Properties to enter into a 99-year lease agreement with the government.

Alternatively, the party wants the court to declare that the arrangement, through which the government became the registered owner of the farms when Comsar Properties donated the land to it, and the government then agreeing to lease the same land to the company for 99 years, is unlawful.

The farms, with a combined size of more than 17 000 hectares, are situated east of Windhoek and north of Dordabis.

The farms Rainhof and Kameelboom and a portion of the farm Smaldeel were owned by the company Rainhof Farming Company, which agreed to sell the farms to the government for N$28.5 million in September 2018.

Another farm, Wolffsgrund, which was owned by the close corporation Wolffsgrund Farming CC, was sold to the government for N$14.9 million, also in September 2018.

Comsar Properties paid the purchase price of N$43.4 million to the farms’ owners and then donated the farms to the government. In return, the government agreed to lease the land to the company for 99 years.

Comsar Properties also paid N$118 million to the farms’ owners as compensation for the loss of their livestock farming business on the farms.

The company bought three other farms, with a combined size of about 28 000 hectares, in the same area in 2012 and 2013, and combined the land to form a game reserve operating under the name Marula Game Ranch.

PDM leader McHenry Venaani claimed in a sworn statement filed at the court that the sale of the farms to the government and the subsequent lease of the land to Sardarov’s company were part of a scheme devised to circumvent the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act.

The act says a non-Namibian buyer needs the consent of the minister of land reform to acquire commercial farmland in Namibia.

In his affidavit, Venaani said in terms of the act, a leasehold period of 99 years is reserved solely for previously disadvantaged Namibians, and that a 99-year lease amounts to effective ownership of land by Sardarov’s company.

In an answering affidavit also filed at the court, Nujoma said the farms were too expensive for the government to buy for resettlement purposes.

Comsar Properties had plans to expand its investments in Namibia, which would result in more employment and business opportunities for the country, “much more than the benefits to be derived from resettling a few families on the farms,” Nujoma said.

Nujoma also said the sale of the farms to the government and the lease of the land to Sardarov’s company were considered and approved by the Cabinet, and that he was “within my rights as minister responsible for land reform to approve it for the benefit of the Namibian people”.