Letter: Official ideology tests the limits - The Citizen

President Ramaphosa attracted some ridicule for his remarks last week that it was possible to live without electricity, but not without water. In fact, neither is dispensable in a modern economy.

This is especially true with regard to agriculture. And so, depending on one’s perspective, it is either fitting or a matter of profound irony that the President made these comments while the Department of Water and Sanitation published draft regulations that would link water licences to racial ownership criteria.

If pushed through and implemented, it’s difficult to see how these measures would not be devastating for the farming economy, with all the attendant adverse consequences for the country at large. This has particular resonance in view of the stress that food price inflation is placing on South African households.

The regulations are another regrettable indication that while South Africa is in the grip of multiple crises, the response of the ruling party and the government it presides over seems determined by its ideological impulses. Race-based ‘transformation’ is the default position; this has also been demonstrated recently in the Employment Equity Amendment Act.

South Africa’s farmers – of all backgrounds – are a priceless asset to the country. They have continued to operate in the face of a tough international environment and an often hostile internal policy regime, and even as the state has failed in providing power, maintaining logistics networks and, yes, supplying water supply too.   

A sensible response would be to encourage and support this hard-pressed community or at a minimum to refrain from doing harm. Yet – to appropriate the President’s comments – official ideology, having played no small role in curtailing the electricity supply, seems now intent on measuring the extent to which farming can survive without water.

The costs of this will not be carried by farmers alone.

Terence Corrigan

Institute of Race Relations