After reading Wandile Sihlobo’s first book, Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity & Agriculture, I conveyed my dissatisfaction to him.
I was disappointed because it was not a typical book but a compilation of articles he had published in newspapers, some of which were co-authored with colleagues and intellectual friends.
Even though the written work of an expert generally revolves around his or her area of specialisation, newspaper articles do not arise from a single unfolding motif. They are triggered by daily happenings that do not cohere.
As a collection of articles, his book necessarily lacked thematic flow, for the idea of it becoming a book arose retrospectively. That is why it left me dissatisfied.
When I laid my hands on his latest book, A Country of Two Agricultures: The Disparities, The Challenges, The Solutions, I felt like someone repaid a debt.
I am neither an economist nor an agricultural expert, but anyone who knows something about SA will not fail to grasp the appositeness of the title of Sihlobo’s book. We are indeed a country of two nations and, like other aspects of our national life, agriculture has not been unaffected by our historical bifurcation.
What is particularly informative about the book is that he is not an office-bound expert who propounds theories about the world out there. He is often out in the field to see for himself and hear from farmers who are grappling with real problems.
When he writes about what he calls “dualism in SA’s agriculture”, he has seen it with his own eyes. He has witnessed the struggles of Gift Mafuleka, a young black commercial farmer in Bronkhorstspruit who battles to access white-controlled markets even though his produce is of high quality.
Given the enormity of governance blunders made by the ANC-led government over the past 30 years, reference to colonialism and apartheid is now becoming taboo.
Sihlobo does not respect such tendentious taboos. He calls upon white people in the private sector to support black farmers since, as he correctly observes, “the success of white farmers in SA was mainly on the back of deliberate government support that excluded black farmers”.
Please don’t be mistaken. Nowhere in the book does Sihlobo bash white people. He approaches his subject with the technical coldness of an expert in his field, producing numbers and evidence to back up his statements.
In SA’s highly racialised public discourse, misleading assumptions float everywhere. A black author who writes a book about two agricultures runs the risk of being mistaken for a defender of the innumerable bungles of the ANC in government.
But Wandile does not sweep the incompetence of the black government under the table. He states the painful truth that white and black farmers grapple with on a daily basis: “poor roads and unreliable electricity and water supply directly affect the profitability and sustainability of farming operations”. The destructiveness of municipalities regarding agricultural infrastructure is also well documented.
It is not surprising that, as Sihlobo demonstrates through compelling data, our country’s agricultural sector is being left behind by SA’s peers in the Global South.
Our frustrations tempt us to jump to the wrong conclusions. Readers will probably be as surprised as I was to learn that despite all our problems, “SA’s agricultural gross value [in the period between 2010 and 2020] increased by 44%.” This says a great deal about the resilience of our farming community.
The book highlights problems but, at the same time, awakens us to the fact that it is not all doom and gloom. Sihlobo also explores and suggests solutions.
One will not finish reading the book without realising that he has great faith in the agricultural potential of SA’s former homelands. He believes that poor provinces such as Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal can use agriculture to turn their fortunes around.
What he does not seem to appreciate fully is the backwardness and greediness of the chiefs who control land in rural black communities. Though they claim to hold the land on behalf of their communities, most of them are in it for themselves — not for the people. Sihlobo might need to moderate his passion for using land in the former homelands to bridge SA’s agricultural dualism.
Even as the title of the book captures a fundamental reality about our country’s agriculture, it’s a tad misleading as the book is far more comprehensive than the title suggests.
The reader will learn a great deal about a wide range of themes, certainly more than agricultural bifurcation. The ground covered extends from the implications of trade policy for agricultural growth to the negative effects of technology on future work in agriculture. It proceeds further to include matters related to competition among Brics countries and the consequences of Covid-19. Indeed, these subjects go far beyond A Country of Two Agricultures.
This book will familiarise readers with the important issues involved in the production of the food they throw into their mouths every day, and some of the ideas contained in it will certainly enrich the mind.
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