Simply Collateral Damage?

Editorial

Last week, Martin’s Witvlei Meat lost its latest court battle with the Agribank, which is demanding that the company be evicted from the abattoir which it has been leasing from the bank at Witvlei, in the Omaheke Region about 150km east of Windhoek.

Witvlei Meat has been leasing the slaughterhouse from the Agribank since 2006. Agribank had paid N$11 million to acquire the abattoir from !Uri !Khubis Abattoir (Pty) Ltd, which went bankrupt in 2004. !Uri !Khubis built the slaughterhouse largely with a N$50 million loan from Agribank. If it sounds confusing, it is, but such are the legalities that Agribank still had to pay N$11m without having recouped its N$50m loan from !Uri !Khubis.

Anyway, Agribank is arguing that Witvlei Meat, which exports beef mainly to Norway and has an annual turnover of about N$120m, is illegally operating from its abattoir because their lease agreement expired in 2008 and that Witvlei Meat had failed to take up a previous offer to buy the abattoir for N$15million.

Witvlei argue that they did, indeed, offer to buy the abattoir for N$15m in August 2009 when the N$62 500 monthly lease was extended.

In January 2010 the Agribank gave the offer to the government for approval but the Cabinet allegedly said the sale must be done at “market value” set at N$40,2m by 2011 when the reply was given to Witvlei Meat.

It appears a deadlock ensued until last year when Agribank asked the courts to have Witvlei evicted. High Court Judge Dave Smuts ordered that Witvlei Meat had no right to continue operating from the abattoir.

What seems lost in the debacle is that 160 jobs [Witvlei Meat claims to be the single largest employer in Omaheke] and hundreds of dependents are at risk of losing an income. In fact, the eviction order could be effected any moment and it is not as if Witvlei Meat can simply pack up and operate from another place.

Courts are there to interpret and adjudicate based on the law [including contracts]. So one can perhaps not fault Judge Smuts. But the Agribank surely is being heartless towards the workers and being shortsighted with regard to the wider economic impact the closure of a successful business such as Witvlei Meat would have at the settlement and in the Omaheke Region – probably blinded by their dealings with Martin, who appears to be reticent and careless in the matter. Witvlei even missed a deadline to pay security for their Supreme Court appeal against Smuts’ ruling.

Yet it is the Agribank’s stance that is most unacceptable. In the same week that Witvlei Meat lost its case, this newspaper reported that Agribank was being lenient towards BEE farmers who owe N$644 million [N$320m in arrears] for farms that were bought with government subsidies called the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme.

The hypocrisy is infuriating because it appears they care nothing for the workers. But they dare not take back farms because many are owned by the elite in government and the private sector. It matters not to Agribank, seemingly, that many of the elites keep the farms more as trophies and leisure centres than for agricultural production, anyway.

A similar situation is unfolding in the east of Kavango, in the Ndiyona consituency, where the Namibia Development Corporation and Minister of Agriculture John Mutorwa were trying to kick out a company that is leasing the Shitemo agricultural project. Just like at Witvlei, little consideration appears to have been given to the multi-million dollar investments made as well as the people reliant on the income from the production of the farm.

Without making it obvious, it appears the people who take such decisions at Agribank or the agriculture ministry and NDC are more interested in their powers rather than the well-being of the people who need the jobs most.

When the elite fight their battles, they must please consider who gets harmed most and not treat those on the periphery as mere collateral damage as if we are in an unavoidable war.