“Farming Is All He Knows”: Daughter’s R5m Mission to Secure Dad’s 18-Year Farming Legacy
- Simosakhe Hleko, 62, built a cattle, sheep and lucerne operation on a 743-hectare Eastern Cape farm over 18 years without owning the land
- His daughter Nolusindiso launched a BackaBuddy campaign seeking R5 million so the family can secure Mooivlei Farm for good
- Simosakhe applied to the Department of Land Reform three times over two decades but has yet to secure permanent ownership
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A 62-year-old Eastern Cape farmer who began his working life as a labourer at 14 is now at the centre of a fundraising effort by his daughter, who wants to buy the land he has farmed for nearly two decades before it slips out of the family's reach.
Simosakhe Hleko has spent 18 years building a livestock and lucerne business on Mooivlei, a 743-hectare farm in the Joe Gqabi District. He has no formal education. What he does have is more than four decades of practical farming knowledge, a growing commercial operation, and a family determined to protect what he built.
From farm labourer to commercial farmer
Simosakhe was born in 1964 to farmworker parents and started earning wages on farms as a teenager. By 20, he had saved enough from those wages to buy his first animals. Over the years that followed, he moved his livestock between six different properties while looking for somewhere more permanent.
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In 2008, he reached an arrangement to keep most of his herd at Mooivlei. Eleven years later, he left salaried work entirely and committed to farming the property full-time, supporting a wife and five children on less than R5,000 a month, according to the family.
Building on land he does not own
What Simosakhe developed at Mooivlei is substantial. The farm now includes around 699 hectares of natural grazing, 17 hectares of flood irrigation and 27 hectares of arable dryland. By 2025, the operation was selling roughly 50 weaners annually, producing wool for established buyers, and growing lucerne both for feed and as a product sold to neighbouring farmers.
He applied to the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development for help acquiring land in 2003 and again in 2013. Both applications were unsuccessful. In 2024, he approached the department again, and Mooivlei entered a formal state-land lease application process. Departmental records from December 2025 list the property as available through the department's beneficiary selection programme. The family says he submitted the required paperwork but remains uncertain about the outcome.
His son Vuyolwethu, who studied animal production formally, has since joined the business, giving the operation both practical depth and academic grounding.
Watch Nolusindiso share her father's story in the YouTube video below:
A daughter's determination
Rather than wait on a process with no guaranteed result, Simosakhe's daughter Nolusindiso launched a BackaBuddy campaign called "Help My Father Buy the Land He's Farmed for 18 Years." In its first three weeks, 31 donors contributed R4,519, including supporters from the Netherlands.
"This is my father, Simosakhe Hleko," Nolusindiso wrote in the campaign. "Farming is all he knows. He knows every corner of Mooivlei like the back of his hand."
She is sharing his story internationally in the hope of reaching agricultural organisations and individuals who understand what long-term land security means.
"Helping him keep Mooivlei wouldn't just solve a crisis," Nolusindiso says. "It would be full circle, the ultimate retirement gift for a man who has spent his whole life giving everything to the land."
To support the campaign, visit BackaBuddy at the link: https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-my-father-buy-the-land-hes-farmed-for-18-yrs
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Source: Briefly News
