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Craig Davids asked Morwapheta Consulting Services to investigate after white farmers farmers paid R20 000 to each farm worker to give up on their shareholding for which the Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform had paid R800 000 for each.

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Sizwe sama Yende

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Retired Master of the High Court in Northern Cape, Craig Davids, who commissioned an investigation into the province’s agricultural black economic empowerment scam, has died in a car accident.

Davids’ brother, Lorenzo, tweeted that he died following a head on collision on the N1 in Kimberley on Monday as he was driving home.

David’s death is a blow to thousands of farm workers who fraudulently lost their shareholding in 22 equity share schemes.

He intervened and asked Morwapheta Consulting Services to investigate after white farmers farmers paid R20 000 to each farm worker to give up on their shareholding for which the Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform had paid R800 000 for each.

The department spent close to R1 billion buying shares for labourers on 22 farms in 2016.

Morwapheta Consulting Services owner, Mpho Sebashe, said that Davids opposed the department’s court application for an order not to pay for the investigation.

RELATED: How white farmers used big Afrikaans to rob us of life-changing shares – Agri-BEE beneficiary

“He appointed me after the department requested his office to investigate fraudulent activities happening in the equity schemes,” Sebashe said.

The Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development and Land Reform has however been refusing to pay Morwapheta for the investigation and even went to court to oppose it.

The People’s Eye reported last week that the black farm workers, mostly uneducated, were allegedly given documents written in big and legalese Afrikaans to sign away their government-sponsored shareholding.

The workers thought they were signing for their annual dividends but were surprised to learn that they sold their shares back to the white farmers for a mere R20 000 each.

Instead of helping the workers reclaim their shares, the department has resorted to appeal a Kimberley High Court decision, which ordered them to to pay R3.7 million to Morwapheta Consulting Services for investigating how unscrupulous white farmers robbed the farm workers.

Sebashe recommended that the workers’ shares must be returned to them.

Sebashe investigated Badirammogo Trust but said that the farmers involved in all the 22 schemes allegedly used the same modus operandi.

According to the  Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Rural Development’s appeal court papers dated April 15 2024,  departmental head, Moira Marais, argues that the department did not appoint Morwapheta Consulting Services to conduct the investigation.

Marais said that the majority judges in the Kimberley High Court erred when they relied on minutes of a meeting that took place on June 30 2017 as being indicative that the department instructed the Master of the High Court to appoint Sebashe’s company.