Letter: Stop sabotaging farmers - Business Day

Without substantially improved GDP growth performance, SA has no prospect of achieving any of its socioeconomic aspirations. This is an existential issue, with real consequences for SA’s future as a constitutional democracy.

Getting growth going will need every resource the country can muster. It also demands a recognition that these resources are in direly limited supply, and that those the country has need to be prudently encouraged.

Recent revelations by the department of agriculture, land reform & rural development indicate just how removed these imperatives are from official thinking. A number of documents obtained by Sakeliga show the department planned to use “empowerment” criteria to enforce racial “transformation” on the sector. This would be applied to such things as import and export permits and water licences.

Sakeliga correctly notes that this has not been properly implemented — a rare instance in which administrative dysfunction does the country a service — but elements of this thinking have been on display with the recent regulations on water use.

Expertise and entrepreneurship need to be preserved where they exist and nurtured where they are needed. SA’s government treats them as dispensable in pursuit of an ideological agenda.

SA has a world-class agricultural sector that perseveres under extremely trying conditions, many of the obstacles created by the very government that now seeks to erect additional hindrances.

We believe a growth rate of up to 7% is not only necessary but achievable. It’s often said this will be possible only if an environment conducive to growth is in place — these revelations remind SA that even before that is possible, government needs to cease purposefully undermining its potential.

Terence Corrigan

Project manager, Institute of Race Relations

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2023-11-22-letter-stop-sabotaging-farmers/