Billionaire Thwarted In Bid To Evict Lifelong Farm Worker

Ex-trade unionist Marcel Golding loses high court battle.

- Martin Welz

IN JULY 2013 BILLIONAIRE ex-trade unionist Marcel Golding, then still executive chairman of HCI (Hosken Consolidated Investments) bought portions 9 and 11 of the once-famous Cape wine farm Nooitgedacht (“Never imagined”) from fellow multi-millionaire Simon Barlow for R42.5 million.

Well situated in the foothills of the Helderberg Mountain, between Stellenbosch and Somerset West, the farm – now reduced to a mere 75 hectares,– is unlikely to be commercially viable as a wine farm, and would generally be regarded as a millionaire’s vanity project, confirmed by the huge wrought iron entrance gates each bearing a large letter G, presumably for Golding. Golding refers to his property as a “boutique wine farm”.

In his heyday, he was executive chairman of HCI and a major stakeholder, together with his then business partner Johnny Copeland, in an empire of companies the likes of e.tv, Johnnic, and Tsogo Sun. It would all come crashing down in October 2014, when Copeland had him suspended as HCI chairman for alleged “gross misconduct” related to an undisclosed share deal.

Now, lower down the financial scale but equally serious, the one-time champion of trade unionism has had a full bench of the Western Cape High Court thwart his attempts to summarily evict a farmworker, born on Nooitgedacht, and his young family without proper notice or just cause. But we are ahead of our story.

Many years ago Simon Barlow had built nine identical dormer cottages for his farmworkers along the treelined farm lane 200 meters from the farmhouse. When he sold the farm to Marcel Golding’s company, Darmane Investments (Pty) Ltd in 2013, Barlow moved to one of his other farms, the more famous Rustenberg, taking some of the Nooitgedacht farmworkers with him.