SA’s agriculture sector has been the mainstay of economic growth, even at the height of Covid-19. Its underbelly, however, is its dualism and lack of inclusiveness. The former homelands are left behind; they occupy the periphery of agricultural progress.
This reality hits you when you drive from the southern parts of KwaZulu-Natal to the northern parts of the former Transkei. The more established commercial farming parts in some regions of KwaZulu-Natal blossom with green pastures and bountiful crops. By contrast, the parts that fell under the homeland system are fallow, even though they are on arable land and a potential source of wealth.
The government’s interventions to prioritise agriculture in the past two decades have not led to meaningful improvement of the agricultural economy in the former homelands, specifically the Eastern Cape’s Transkei region. Take what was once a jewel of tea production in Pondoland, Magwa Tea.
This is now a shadow of its former self despite being the only primary agricultural entity in the impoverished town of Lusikisiki. Magwa Tea for years has been battling poor management and the plunder of resources. Stories of workers who go for months without receiving wages are not uncommon, which shows the callousness of the authorities.
Whenever I drive through Flagstaff, Lusikisiki and Port St Johns I am unable escape the searing images of neglect of agriculture, which stand in stark contrast to provincial premier Oscar Mabuyane’s rhetoric. He often trumpets agriculture as the cornerstone of his provincial growth strategy, but the reality tells a different story — of neglect, lack of serious commitment to rural development, and failure to hold those who undermine his strategy to account.
Breakthrough development
Traditional leaders, who wield significant influence in rural villages, also bear significant responsibility for neglecting agriculture. For many of us who hail from these regions promoting the province as the future centre of the country’s agriculture economy is a hard sell. Magwa Tea, for example, should have diversified from tea production towards high-value and labour-intensive horticulture, acting as a hub for job creation and rural economic development.
Breakthrough development in horticulture would put the Eastern Cape on the international map. The province has a vehicle for rural and agricultural development in the Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency, but it operates in isolation when it could do so much more if it worked with agribusinesses that have a track record in managing agricultural production.
The Eastern Cape can draw lessons from provinces such as the Western Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo, which have thriving commercial agriculture and supporting institutions. The production activities in these areas have buoyed growth in SA agriculture and sustained local economies.
Encourages dependency
There is growing evidence that the Eastern Cape’s farmer support programme is inefficient. In a critical study published in the academic journal Agrekon in 2019 University of Fort Hare agricultural economist Michael Aliber argued that the Eastern Cape government “is stuck in a vicious cycle whereby it seeks to placate expectant small-scale farmers with material support, which it can most effectively do via problematic group projects. Though generally ineffective, the practice has the effect of maintaining widespread demand for such support, even to the point that small-scale farmers form group projects for the sole purpose of attracting it.”
The support programme, while inefficient, encourages dependency. Aliber further argued that supporting individual farmers with soft loans would be more effective. The government needs to focus its attention on supporting the new crop of commercial black farmers, who could be anchors of agricultural development in the former Transkei.
State support measures must be better co-ordinated and focused on supporting individual commercial farmers rather than spreading thin resources on numerous subsistence farmers who lack scale. This is the only way the country will build a class of thriving black commercial farmers with a higher multiplier effect for the development of related sectors in storage, processing and retail.
• Sihlobo (@WandileSihlobo), chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA and author of ‘Finding Common Ground: Land, Equity, and Agriculture’, is an academic at Stellenbosch University’s department of agricultural economics.
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