Despite the raw data provided to the government that its policies are a failure, ideology wins hands down every time. Land “reform” is the goal, and a benchmark figure of 30% of all productive farms in the country must be handed over to black claimants by 2014, whether they can farm or not. So far the government has not produced one single example of a successful handover, yet the benchmark remains.
A comprehensive document
Thus TAU SA’s SFS document cannot be ignored. Issued in Afrikaans to opinion-formers and the media in Southern Africa, the document covers the spectrum of why agriculture and food security are strategic links in the chain of survival in this part of the world. Agriculture is the only enterprise in the country which has a daily effect on people’s lives. The SFS document covers all facets of life which affect agriculture – research and development, effective marketing, the improvement of declining infrastructure such as roads and rail transport, electricity provision, the country’s telephone service, illegal imports and of course the maintenance of the principle of private property. The expropriation of farms, minimum wages and the swathe of legislation giving people rights over private farmland are all elements inimical to increased food security. The top-heavy welfare emphasis in the economy places a disproportionate load on those few who produce and pay taxes. Fifty-six percent of the country’s budget goes on social spending.
Furthermore, the fact that municipal officials can set their own salaries leaves local councils short of funding, and the decline in the maintenance of local infrastructure and the incompetence in running these councils affects not only urban residents, but also farmers, who have now been drawn into the municipal funding net and are asked to pay for services they do not receive.
Problems facing farmers
Although agriculture contributes around 4% towards the country’s gross national product, the delivery of food to any country’s population on a daily basis is indispensable. In addition, the decline in the number of commercial farmers and the loss of hundreds of thousands of farm jobs among the country’s black population has triggered the decline and even disappearance of many rural towns. Adding to the insecurity in rural areas is the fact that SA farmers are the most murdered and attacked group in the world outside a war zone. Farmers are also taxed to the hilt – municipal taxes, income tax, weapons taxes, water taxes, heavy road tolls, land taxes, capital gains taxes. These are part and parcel of a not so subtle pressure on the farmer to simply give up and sell his farm at whatever price he can get. Crime in all areas is filling the state’s coffers because of the need to replace goods and stock which has been stolen. The SFS document covers affirmative action and its dire consequences, the incompetence and corruption which are now the hallmarks of most, if not all, government departments, the role of NGOs which create expectations in the black community that cannot be realised, climate change and the need for competent and inspirational leadership during natural disasters, security in rural areas, the environment and the preservation of nature, the free market, subsidies, globalisation and all aspects which affect the survival of SA’s peoples via the provision of food and the prevention of hunger.
Global warming
Global warming now tops the world’s agenda in terms of the planet’s survival. The last thing SA’s agricultural sector needs is more warming, but it appears to be inevitable. Of the 12 warmest years on record, 11 occurred between 1995 and 2006.
Time magazine says the only really effective role-players who can combat the global warming crisis are governments and industry. TAU SA declares that in an unfriendly agricultural environment such as SA’s, our government should go out of its way to preserve and protect the commercial farming sector. The opposite is happening, hence TAU SA’s document which is now inviting comment and which will soon be published in English and distributed throughout the world.
Of all the continents, Africa will be the most severely affected by global warming. A quarter of a billion people will lose their water supplies, according to the United Nations IPCC report. Food supplies will dwindle and governments in Africa will have to spend 10% of their budgets or more to adapt to climate change.
It is ironic that SA was a member participant of the G8 Environment Ministers’ Meeting held in Potsdam, Germany in March this year. The chairperson’s final report said that 40% of world trade is based on biological products or processes such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries and the like. The report was deeply concerned at the ongoing dramatic loss of biodiversity and the serious degradation of, inter alia, fertile soils. It stressed the need for improved management of resources. Climate protection should be integrated with sustainable development, the report said. It also declared that the poor in developing countries were “especially vulnerable”.
It is thus incumbent upon the SA government to nurture the commercial farming sector because apart from being the sensible thing to do, SA has committed itself before the world to do so. TAU SA’s final report will of course be sent to the Potsdam Group for its perusal and comment. |fw
