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 R80m, had violated the Press Code.

The Press Council Appeals Committee, chaired by retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe, yesterday 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’.

De Jager also attacked News24 journalists and editors on social media, accusing them of being ‘character assassins’, lying and having a ‘nefarious political agenda’.

The Appeals Committee said in its 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.

However, 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.

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 set aside. 

News24 omitted these facts, the organisation claimed, thus committing a breach of the Press Code by omission.

News24 did not dispute these 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 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’.

Full News24 report

Press Council ruling