Staff Reporter
THE Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) party has launched an interlocutory application challenging a court decision to join two companies that sold land to Russian billionaire Rashid Sardarov, who subsequently acquired a 99-year lease of four farms.
High Court judge Orben Sibeya, on 15 October 2024, made an order that the Applicant (PDM) must join the sellers, namely Rainhof Farming Company (Pty) Ltd and Wolffsgrund Farming CC, in the proceedings (unless the sellers waived participation by affidavits). The order had to be served on the sellers of the concerned farms.
Comsar Properties, owned by Russian billionaire Sardarov, paid the purchase price of N$43.4 million to the farms’ owners and then donated the farms to the government. In turn, the government agreed to lease the land to the company for 99 years.
In the court challenge, the PDM sought to contest the decision by the Minister of Land Reform, Utoni Nujoma, to give permission for Comsar Properties to lease the farms Kameelboom, Rainhof, Wolffsgrund, and a portion of the farm Smaldeel from the government. After hearing the case and at the precipice of delivering a judgment, Justice Sibeya, however, ordered that the companies that sold the farms to the billionaire be joined to the court case.
Senior Counsel Jean Marais, representing PDM in the matter, however, argued: “It is not without significance that, at the time of these initial affidavits, the 10th respondent, Rainhof Farming Company (Pty) Ltd, had already been deregistered, and the 11th respondent, Wolffsgrund Farming CC, had been in the process of deregistration since 2019.”
“On 13 March 2023, the Tenth and Eleventh Respondents (as Rainhof Farming Company (Pty) Ltd and Wolffsgrund Farming CC) made an application for leave (qua Tenth and Eleventh Respondents) to file further affidavits to, in effect, explain that the Tenth and Eleventh Respondents had been deregistered. In support, the representatives of the two (then) Respondents claimed that they had moved on with their lives and, for that reason, did not pay much attention to the deregistration issue. That was the second opportunity for the representatives (who shared an identity of interests with the entities) to seek re-registration and joinder to protect their interests. Obviously, they purposefully refrained from doing so,” Marais argued.
The lawyer argued that an earlier joinder had already been set aside by the Honourable Court on the basis that it was mistakenly granted since both companies had been deregistered.
“In view thereof, it was, quite simply, impossible for the Applicant to comply with the Order dated 15 October 2024. The sellers no longer exist,” Marais argued.
Representing the second respondent in the matter, namely Comsar Properties SA, owned by Russian national Sardarov, Sisa Namandje argued that, in the absence of an attack on the authorisation of the donation by the Minister of Finance—which came with conditions—the review cannot succeed.
Furthermore, Namandje said that the Applicant (PDM) elected not to cite the sellers at the time they were not deregistered and aggravated its own circumstances by delaying prosecution of the review. “It was during that prolonged delay in filing a Replying Affidavit that the deregistration was effected,” he concluded.