He must lead the way in walking the tightrope between “finding the correct balance between meeting essential needs over the short term and that of fostering confidence in the long term growth potential of the economy”, said AgriSA president, Johannes Möller.
The President has disappointed in the past by making promises about transformation and support programmes in agriculture which were never implemented, said Aggrey Mahanjana, secretary general of African Farmers’ Association of South Africa (Afasa).
Last year, he said, Zuma waxed lyrical about the Fetsa Tlala programme which was supposed to provide production and marketing support for small-scale farmers across South Africa, but since then very little has actually happened on the ground.
“We don’t want more rhetoric. We want the President to assure us the programmes that are meant to drive transformation in agriculture is implanted,” Mahanjana said.
On the issue of land reform he said the President should not announce new policies out of the blue that would “scare people”. “We want a straight forward, decisive plan for land reform,” he said.
AgriSA called on the President to give recognition to farmers for the contributions they made in food security and rural job creation.
The survey also showed that 94% of farmers felt that government was not supportive enough and 87% of farmers felt there was a lack of appreciation and understanding by the public for farmers and what they contributed to the country. These results were indicative of perceptions which negatively impacted on trust and confidence and which required remedial action in order to accelerate the sector’s growth.
“Recognition and appropriate support can be catalysts for unlocking massive potential to the benefit of rural South Africa,” said Möller.
A strong focus was needed on South Africa’s electricity crises, said DA Parliamentary leader, Mmusi Maimane.
“Load-shedding is job-shedding, and it is holding our economy to ransom,” Maimane said at a pre-SONA DA rally. Since 2008 the SA economy has lost R300 billion, and one million jobs due to load-shedding, he said.
It was time for government to break the Eskom monopoly, and for the management of the national electricity grid to be taken away from them, he said.
“We can no longer allow a situation where Eskom is responsible for 95% of South Africa’s electricity generation. We must allow independent power producers to supply electricity to the grid in significant numbers,” said Maimane.
Dr Pieter Mulder, leader of the FF Plus said the party would like president Zuma to act like the head of state and not as leader of the ANC during the State of the Nation address.
The difference between the head of state and the leader of a political party was that on an occasion such as the SONA a head of state rises above petty politics and propaganda for his political party.
Zuma should focus on South Africa’s most important problem at present which was to get the stumbling economy on the go again.
