Akkerland: ‘No inaccuracy and no contravention of the press code,’ says Judge Ngoepe

• News24’s appeal against a ruling by the Press Ombud that it breached the Press Code in its reporting on Akkerland has been upheld.
• The ruling was that News24’s February 2025 article confirming that Akkerland Boerdery’s land was sold to a private buyer for R80 million was correct.
• The article was intended to counter disinformation centred on using Akkerland to inflame fears around legislation on expropriation without compensation.
• For secure, anonymous communication with News24’s investigations team, click here.

News24 has won an appeal against a decision by the Press Ombud that its reporting setting out that Akkerland Boerdery was not expropriated without compensation but sold for R80 million violated the Press Code.

On Thursday, the Press Council appeals committee, chaired by retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe, ruled that the article and headline were accurate.

The committee set aside an earlier ruling by the Press Ombud that ordered News24 to apologise to its readers following a complaint by AfriForum-linked lobby group Suider-Afrikaanse Agri Inisiatief (SAAI), headed by Theo de Jager.

De Jager supported the landowners in litigation against an attempt by the Department of Land Reform to expropriate Akkerland Boerdery’s game farm in Limpopo in 2018.

The complaint was in respect of a February 2025 article under the headline ‘No, Akkerland Boerdery wasn’t expropriated without compensation – owners sold it privately for R80m’.

In addition to filing the complaint, De Jager attacked News24 journalists and editors on social media, accusing them of being “character assassins”, lying and having a “nefarious political agenda”.

He has continued to falsely claim that Akkerland was an example of expropriation without compensation in social media posts.

The latest ruling confirms that Andrew Thompson’s reporting for News24’s disinformation desk was accurate.

The appeals committee said in the ruling that SAAI’s complaint was premised on its belief that the article “gave the impression that the farms were never expropriated by the government”.

This was due to the headline and the content of the article.

But the appeals committee found the headline was accurate.

“There was no inaccuracy, and therefore no contravention of Clause 1.1 of the [Press] Code by the headline because it is true that the farms ‘were not expropriated without compensation’ (compensation was offered) and it is also true that ‘owners sold it privately for R80m’,” the ruling reads.

“As will be shown later, the contents of the article were also in harmony with the headline and thus accurate,” the ruling continues.

READ | Akkerland deception: The Limpopo farm that became a tool to inflame expropriation fears

SAAI went on to set out in the complaint that Akkerland’s owners had to approach the court for interim relief to halt eviction and to have the expropriation set aside. A settlement was reached, and the expropriation was set aside. News24 omitted those facts, the organisation claimed, thus committing a breach of the Press Code by omission.

News24 did not dispute those facts, but argued that no expropriation took place, with or without compensation, as no transfer of title occurred, and that the farms were later sold to a mining company.

The ombud found against News24 on a highly technical legal point in that expropriation was deemed to have taken place on the date the notice of expropriation is served, and News24 argued on appeal that the ombud “impermissibly substituted a technical legal analysis for the Press Code standard”.

The appeals committee found that “there is merit to this argument”.

“Is it true, as the ombud says, that a complete expropriation and transfer of title to the government occurred? Not quite!” the ruling reads.

News24’s appeal was argued by advocate Thembeka Ngcukaitobi, SC, who submitted that the land in question was subject to a land restitution claim, and for an expropriation to be complete in terms of the Constitution, the amount of compensation, as well as the time and manner of payment, must be agreed or ordered by a court.

“The Constitution is, of course, the supreme law, and must therefore prevail over any other law,” the appeals committee found.

“The point we make is that a non-lawyer journalist could not have reasonably been expected to deal with these legal issues in a non-legal publication. The correctness of the ombud’s basis is therefore at best doubtful; at worst, it is wrong,” the ruling reads.

The appeals committee found there was no material omission – the article did mention that legal issues surrounded the attempted expropriation.

“It is important to bear in mind that the purpose of the article was simply to counter the argument that there was a wholesale expropriation of white farms without compensation, and that the Akkerland farms were often cited as an example. This is the context in which both the headline and the article would be understood by the reader. The focus of the article was not about the legal niceties involved, in which an average reader is, in any case, not interested,” the ruling reads.

Gerhard Papenfus, Dr Theo de Jager, and Dr Corné Mulder during a panel discussion in the US.

De Jager, meanwhile, has falsely claimed at least three times between September and December 2025, that Akkerland was an example of expropriation without compensation.

“You can appeal a thousand times, but you can’t get past the fact that Akkerland was expropriated in 2018. Your report was misleading and motivated by a nefarious political agenda. You disappointed your readers,” De Jager said in a post on X on 30 September 2025, when News24 announced its intention to appeal the ombud’s ruling.

“The latest expropriation without compensation after Akkerland and Plaaswerf Beleggings was done by a local authority in Boksburg ‘in the public interest’,” he said on X on 21 September 2025.

The Plaaswerf Beleggings case refers to a property in Heidelberg on which a mortuary operated by the government is situated, not farmland. Here, again, attempts at expropriation have been made since 2020, but the owner has been fighting a lengthy and costly legal battle in court to prevent this and obtain payment for unpaid rent.

The case seems to centre on a dispute over unpaid rent for the property after a failed purchase contract in 2010.

The expropriation notice for Akkerland set out that compensation was to be more than R20 million, an amount that SAAI and De Jager argued was “below market value”.

It remains false to claim it is an example of expropriation without compensation, even on SAAI’s version that it was expropriated.

“Here is an interesting contradiction: Agbiz refers to the Driefontein expropriation without compensation as a test case (they could also have referred to Plaaswerf Beleggings or Akkerland)…” he tweeted on 5 December 2025.

“Google Driefontein, Plaaswerf Beleggings and Akkerland before you claim that we have no expropriation without compensation,” he said on 11 December 2025.

Akkerland cannot be referred to in the context of expropriation without compensation. The Plaaswerf Beleggings matter has also stretched on since 2020, with no forced removal of the property.

Driefontein refers to a disused property in Ekurhuleni that the City has attempted to expropriate without compensation and is considered a test case. But in January 2026, the City backtracked. It is unclear whether it will seek to reinstate the expropriation process and whether it will be without compensation.

De Jager and SAAI have consistently failed to mention the subsequent sale of Akkerland for more than R80 million since 2019.

“Disinformation has become the weapon of choice for those seeking to bend public perception. This ruling affirms something increasingly precious – the right of journalists to hold those who peddle that disinformation accountable. News24’s disinformation desk exists precisely for moments like this,” said News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson.

“The underlying fact is that Akkerland Boerdery was not expropriated without compensation. This ruling vindicates the importance of facts. What was at stake in this case was whether proper journalism that lays out facts could be buried beneath a narrative engineered to provoke fear and outrage. It could not. And that is the true significance of this outcome,” Basson said.