Justice prevails: 10 years late
Possible R3bn bank claim Court returns 14 lost farms
August 2, 2009
By Wiseman Khuzwayo
After 10 years, more than 50 applications to the Pretoria High Court and a life of almost utter poverty, justice has finally prevailed for Dumisa Dlamini.
Dlamini is going to have his 14 sugarcane farms in Mpumalanga, which were fraudulently taken from him, returned.
The farms were liquidated by Absa for a R13 million debt, which Dlamini had always disputed. In July 2002, Dlamini had the liquidation order set aside but Absa obtained another one.
The information here is sourced from a judgement by Judge Pierre Rabie of the Pretoria High Court.
Emele van der Merwe, a private investigator who has been assisting Dlamini, believes that Absa owes Dlamini almost R3 billion, including compounded interest, from the proceeds of sugarcane harvests that it has been keeping since 1998.
This follows a letter sent last month by the Assistant Master of the High Court in Pretoria to the Registrar of Deeds, saying he was in possession of a court order of July 2002, which was received in December 2003, instructing the liquidators to reverse the assets to their lawful owner, Dlamini.
It is yet to be explained why it took the Master of the High Court six years to implement this instruction.
When the saga began in 1998, Dlamini was transformed from being a sugarcane baron to a hustler, who could not even afford a lawyer to fight his battles.
All along, he maintained that Absa, white sugar farmers in Mpumalanga, the police and other state institutions had ganged up against him.
In 1993, Dlamini, a Swazi prince and owner of sugarcane farms and hotels in that country, bought Rockvale Farm, measuring 206.1434 hectares, through his close corporation Kleindoornkop Boerdery, in Mpumalanga, in two cash installments.
Kleindoornkop was registered with Companies Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) under number 1987/008027/23.
The company went on to buy other farms and hotels in the area and Dlamini also purchased other businesses under his own name.
The Malelane branch of Absa, which had become Dlamini's banker, acknowledged and signed a list of properties, which were registered under Kleindoornkop.
Surprisingly, another close corporation (CC) by the same name was later registered with Cipro under number 1998/ 028045/23, with a pseudo lawyer, Peter Joseph Hefferman, as the sole member.
This enabled Dlamini to put the CC under voluntary liquidation on application by Absa for a debt of R13m.
In February 2006, in an affidavit, Johannes Helberg, a senior legal adviser with the office of the Registrar of Close Corporations, said: "This, as is commonly known (having two CCs registered under the same name), is most unusual."
However, Absa sought the payment of the debt from Dlamini's CC without even issuing a summons. He alleged that under duress of threats that he would be sequestrated, he signed a settlement agreement with Absa, which was made an order of court. Under the agreement, Dlamini and Kleindoornkop ceded their right to the proceeds of the sugarcane harvest to Absa. They further authorised Absa to receive payments for the sugarcane. The balance, if any, after the monthly instalments, would be paid to a bank account nominated by Dlamini.
But he alleges that Absa never paid him a single cent.
In a subsequent settlement agreement, which was an order of court, Dlamini and Absa agreed to share the proceeds equally.
According to a report by Haroon Minty, an accountant and tax consultant, the money owed to Dlamini on May 6, 2002, stood at R100.04m. A further R63.18m was owed at June 11, 2002.
Dlamini has been to court more than 50 times since 1998 in his fight with Absa.
During the process of the liquidation, the liquidators attached 12 farms despite the fact that only two had been registered in the name of Kleindoornkop.
In the meantime, Itshak Knafo, an Israeli businessman who runs an irrigation business, applied for the sequestration of Dlamini in person in 2004.
However, in June 2007 he recanted and made an affidavit to Nelspruit police saying he had been fraudulently used in the sequestration of Dlamini.
Knafo said he was bribed by a promise of receiving one of Dlamini's farms.
In 2007, Absa applied to have Dlamini declared a vexatious litigant. A provisional order was granted, subject to Absa applying within 20 days to have it made permanent. But it failed to do so.
In April last year, Dlamini went to court again to have the liquidation order set aside. Absa objected on the basis that Dlamini was a declared insolvent and had also been declared a vexatious litigant, and was therefore in contempt of court.
However, the court found that there was neither an indication that Absa had instituted the application to have Dlamini declared vexatious nor that it had caused him to be arrested and detained, pending confirmation that he had in fact been declared vexatious.
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