Thursday 02 December 2004
Crocodile Country Inn, Nelspruit
Program Director
MEC for Agriculture and Land Administration, Ms Nomsa Mtsweni
Members of the Executive Council present
Representatives of our various stakeholders in the agricultural sector and the
province as a whole
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to address you on this occasion of the
Mpumalanga Consultative Workshop on Agriculture.
As a province that is largely rural and where agriculture is a considerable
part of our lives and the economy, we are honoured that the Agri BEE launch is
finally taking place in our province.
We wish to congratulate and commend the honourable Minister, Ms Thoko
Didiza, for her vision and steadfastness in steering the process that led to the
timeous publication of the consultative document and for her decision to also
grace the occasion of its launch here in Mpumalanga.
This Agri BEE framework will facilitate the much needed discussions that
will hopefully lead to the finalization of an 'equitable access and
participation strategy' for the agricultural sector in our country as a whole.
We look forward to vibrant and robust discussions amongst all participants
gathered here over the next two days.
These discussions should hopefully ensure that as a province we are better
placed to make substantial contributions that will enable the Minister, and her
team, to prepare a Charter that does justice to the complex issues faced by the
Agricultural sector but also takes into account, where necessary, regional
nuances or imperatives.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is indeed an honour for me to come and speak to you
today. Not to you as individual farmers or owners of enterprises or
representatives of organised groups in the Agricultural sector, but rather to
speak to you as a single collective of stakeholders poised to grapple with the
immense challenges facing the agricultural sector. Particularly how to maximise
this sector's contribution to employment creation, the eradication of poverty
and underdevelopment in our province.
I believe that no one should understate the importance of this Consultative
Workshop, particularly as it comes at a time when our province is gearing itself
for a Provincial Growth and Development Summit to be held in February next year.
You may recall that upon the election of this provincial Executive Council,
we announced that we would meet with our social partners in order to consolidate
a common vision on the promotion of rising levels of growth, investment, job
creation and people-centred development in the province.
I am happy to report that preparations are fairly advanced for a provincial
Summit that will adopt concrete strategies and partnerships for addressing the
urgent challenges that we face.
Therefore it is our hope that as you embark on your deliberations over the next
two days, the speeding up of the creation of work and the fight against poverty
will remain uppermost in your minds.
Juan Somavia, the respected Director-General of the International Labour
Organization (ILO) had this to say:
"The persistence of poverty is a moral indictment of our times. While there
are some signs of progress, the fact remains: never have we seen so much wealth
while so many continue to live in abject poverty…
For individuals, poverty is a nightmare. It is a vicious circle of poor
health, reduced working capacity, low productivity and shortened life
expectancy. For families poverty is a trap. It leads to inadequate schooling,
low skills, insecure income, early parenthood, ill health and an early death.
For society, poverty is a curse. It hinders growth, fuels instability, and keeps
poor countries from advancing on the path to sustainable development. For all of
us-and for all these reasons-the cost of poverty in shattered human lives is too
high"
Somavia's remarks may have been based on his observations of the global
experience but they do confirm a reality that we face in our own country today,
even as we enter the second decade of freedom.
Most recent estimates, such as those provided by the Development Bank of
Southern Africa (DBSA) and the United Nations Development Programme, suggest
that at least half of Mpumalanga's population could be considered to be poor.
Surely this level is too high and should urge us to action, especially when
we are reminded, "For all of us-and for all these reasons-the cost of poverty in
shattered human lives is too high".
The evidence also suggests that it is in our rural areas that we are to find
not only the largest relative proportion of poor people but also those who are
most characterised by poor nutrition, poor education, lack of access to adequate
sanitation and service delivery, in a manner that certainly robs them of a
dignified life.
I place emphasis on the extent of rural poverty in order to highlight the
enormous contribution that the outcome of your deliberations can make to the
success of our efforts to eradicate poverty in the province.
As we all know, Agriculture is the backbone of the rural towns and rural
areas of the province and contributes significantly towards growth and
development.
In fact, the contribution of agriculture is sometimes understated when people
ignore those sectors that are linked and are dependent on its performance such
as food products, wood products, pulp, paper, textiles, leather products,
fertilizer, pesticides and so on.
Surely the implementation of viable strategies to develop the potential of
Agriculture, and its contribution to productivity, value addition and employment
creation, is the way to go if we want to make a significant dent in the poverty
challenge that we face in our province.
Fortunately Agriculture, unlike many other sectors in the economy, has a
common perspective about the sector's strategic issues and it is one that is
reflected in the Strategic Plan document of 2001 and the partnership that has
evolved between government and industry over time.
I would like to argue that a central challenge in your deliberations over
the next two days will be to identify how the province can be positioned to
implement and benefit from the Strategic Plan for South African Agriculture of
November 2001.
The priority programmes referred to areas such as:
· Implementation of the safety and security strategy to bring rural stability
and confidence.
· Improved governance and implementation of partnerships and a mentorship
programme.
· Fast track the programme of land redistribution for agricultural development
(LRAD).
· Transform the system of agricultural technology development and transfer
towards being more market responsive.
· Establish a broadly accessible market information system (information systems,
economic analysis capacity in each province).
· Develop and operationalise an effective risk management system (plant and
animal health system, natural disasters, credit guarantees).
· Ensuring fair competition-locally and internationally.
· Implementation of the shared vision on labour and land reform.
· The process of empowerment in all sectors of the agrifood sector.
· Targeted investment to enhance competitiveness (infrastructure: water,
electricity, telecommunications, rail, air, road, financial services; training,
mechanisation).
· Lowering the overall cost of production, including a further reduction in the
taxes and duties on diesel and other inputs.
In your discussions you should explore how far we as a province have moved
in terms of the priority programmes that were identified in the Strategic Plan.
These priority programmes and the overall Strategic Plan should guide our
expectations of the Agricultural sector in the Provincial Growth and Development
strategy.
I am happy that many of these priority programmes will be the subject of
your reflections in the various commissions.
We do hope that your commissions will not unduly focus on technical matters
and the latest scientific debates at the expense of concrete suggestions on how
we can position Agriculture in this province to be more dynamic, to grow faster
and to employ the masses of our people in work that is safe and dignified.
Ladies and Gentlemen, today's launch of the Agri BEE consultative document
is an appropriate response to the historical factors that have impeded the
contribution of Agriculture to a better life of our people.
As acknowledged even in the Strategic Plan for the sector, our agriculture is
characterised by extreme dualism and inequality that has affected the growth and
profitability of the sector whilst also contributing to chronic poverty in our
rural areas.
As we all know, even in our province we have had large commercial farms
taking much of the productive land and infrastructure, while the majority of the
population was squeezed into undeveloped former Bantustan areas.
It is a remarkable milestone in the history of our democracy that organized
Agriculture, represented by AgriSA, the National African Farmers Union (NAFU)
and our government, have come to agreement and identified 'skewed participation'
as a priority that must be addressed in the Agricultural sector.
They have agreed that, in addressing the legacy of exclusion and
discrimination, "the challenge is now to unlock the talents and creative energy
of people and improve their participation in all aspects of the sector and rid
it once and for all of the many barriers rooted in its historical dualism".
The Government's intention is to ensure that agriculture is able to
contribute to achieving national economic and social objectives. What we need is
a prosperous agriculture based on cooperation and collaboration and the humane
treatment of workers and their families.
Working conditions, including remuneration and access to government services, have to improve. Evictions of people living on the land, farm murders and abuses of farm workers are not conducive to the development of this important sector of our economy.
In the same way that we speak out against farm murderers, we must display the same level of intolerance to the inhuman treatment of farm labourers. We must fight farm evictions.
Therefore, I think that the deliberations of this workshop will be incomplete
if we do not address how we can bring to an end the positioning of our rural
areas as 'labour reserves' in such ways that remove the legacy of apartheid
obstacles that constrained the dynamism of African farming.
Whilst there are numerous initiatives of government in this regard, and the
Agri BEE consultative documents make reference to these issues in some detail as
well, we need to also develop a provincial perspective and partnership on how we
can support emerging farmers in our province and assist the return of our people
to the land.
In this endeavour there are various critical opportunities and constraints
that we need to consider carefully and these include, among others,
· Land ownership patterns and how they can be transformed in a manner that
contributes to the economic development of the province.
· Research and development and how it can assist our small or subsistence
farmers to 'grow'.
· A training environment that is more responsive to the needs of small and
subsistence farmers.
· Access to finance and possible provincial initiatives that can be adopted.
· Development of rural social and physical infrastructure such as sanitation, water supplies, rural clinics, education, adult basic education, housing, electricity, roads.
· The role of traditional social structures and how they can play a leading role in supporting emerging farmers in historically disadvantaged communities.
We look forward to receiving a report on your proceedings as we have hope
that you will be up to the task of moving beyond the emotive confrontations of
yesterday and focus on the immense challenges that our province is facing.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have spoken before about the rich endowment that
our province is blessed with and the various opportunities that exist, even in a
sector such as Agriculture.
We believe that it will be up to us, and to forums such as this one, to l
find the answers and commitment for taking our province forward and achieve its
true potential.
The people's contract calls for all of us to single-mindedly transform the
lives of our people.
This launch of the Agri BEE consultative document in our province is an
excellent opportunity for us to explore how the Agricultural sector can be
better positioned to contribute to the challenges of poverty, growth and equity
in our province.
In its primary concerns about equity and the transformation of a sector that
epitomised apartheid era exclusion and discrimination, this Agri BEE
consultative document takes us closer to building our nation and our province.
I leave you with the words of our President on nation building and equity,
which best describe the significance of what we are doing today:
"Nation building is the construction of the reality and the sense of common
nationhood which would result from the abolition of disparities in the quality
of life among South Africans based on the racial, gender, and geographic
inequalities we all inherited from the past….we will have to answer the question
honestly as to whether we are making the requisite progress"
I wish you all the success in your deliberations
I thank you.