Zinhle Tyikwe, CEO of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA), which represents the biggest food retailers in the country, says the government is taking food security for granted in spite of the wake-up call of the July 2021 riots.
“We believe we are the most important sector in South Africa because we are feeding the country, but this is not how the government sees us.”
When the council tells ministers and officials that more needs to be done with more urgency to help the retail sector ensure food security they're told that “all sectors in South Africa think they're the most important sector, you're not the only one”.
When they tried engaging with department of trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel he sent his officials round with a list of demands he expected the sector to meet.
“We're trying to ensure food security and he comes with this long shopping list of stuff we need to do.”
She finds it “frightening that government doesn't put food security as the top of its priorities”.
Instead of providing useful assistance to an industry battling to protect vital cold chains from regular expected stage 6 and stage 8 blackouts, it continues to bombard them with time-wasting and costly regulatory and compliance demands, she says.
“They see the resilience of the retailers and assume that in spite of the load-shedding it's going to be business as usual. And so they keep putting additional input costs on food that retailers have to deal with from a regulatory perspective.”
They have to pay so-called “assignees”, government-appointed companies that go into retail outlets to inspect the quality and cost of their food, although government inspectors perform the same function.
This is just one example of the “regulatory and compliance impediments food retailers are having to take on and pay for which they never had to before”.
In this way, the government is contributing directly to the rising cost of food — which the competition commission has blamed on price gouging by retailers — making it increasingly unaffordable for the majority.
She says the government shows little appreciation of the challenges involved in cold chain management in the midst of a worsening electricity crisis.
“The lack of government understanding of this critical and delicate process that food retailers have to manage explains its refusal to pass on diesel rebates to them. They have no understanding of the food retail system at all.”
The CGCSA wrote an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa three months ago calling for “urgent and decisive action ” to address the power crisis, saying that if it continued “we will not be able to guarantee stable supplies of food, medicines and other essential goods”.
“We want the relevant government ministers to act,” she says.
They've met with electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa “but he's unable to act because he doesn't have executive powers”.
“We want to put in business continuity plans, we're starting to plan for stage 8 and even for a possible grid failure. We need to know how it's going to affect us, our security, our payments, the availability of food.”
One of their urgent requests to the president was to ensure that in the event of a repeat of the July riots law enforcement will protect them.
Our crime risk department is seeing crime related to civil unrest and service delivery going up
“Our crime risk department, which gets reports from our members, is seeing crime related to civil unrest and service delivery going up.
“We're saying that if stage 6 load-shedding continues and we start getting stage 8 there's a high probability there will be high levels of criminality due to civil unrest and service delivery issues. Retailers are the easiest targets.
“If there's no electricity for 14 hours out of 24 it will have a huge impact on food security, food safety and quality and food loss, because they have to dispose of this food. You've already got a lot of people who are going hungry in this country; now we're throwing food away.”
By “urgent and decisive action” they mean the government needs to put plans in place and tell them what these plans are.
“We're told that Kusile, Medupi and Koeberg power stations are out of service but we do not know what the maintenance plan is, we do not know where are they at, so that at least we can have some sort of confidence that a process is in place, that work is being done.”
Having the electricity minister present a plan to parliament to prolong the life of coal-fired power stations doesn't help the retail sector at all, says Tyikwe.
“We need the independent power producer process fast tracked because it cannot continue to take 18 to 24 months for an IPP to be approved. We need alternative power sources yesterday already.
“Either the national energy regulator's compliance regulations need to be eased up or government needs to give Nersa more capacity so they can fast-track these approvals.
“Our key message to government is that we need turnaround times put in place that are fast and efficient, so that as many alternative sources as possible can come into the grid ASAP.”
When they called for “urgent and decisive action” this is what they wanted, she says. “Nothing much has happened since then, and we are asking what do we do as an industry? What are our options so that we remain sustainable and continue to provide the country with safe and secure food?”
Unless the government shows more urgency, South Africa will become increasingly dependent on food imports, she says.
“The food value chain is under huge constraints. Food production in South Africa is going to be impacted negatively and importing will be the only way to ensure there's enough food on the shelves and in the fridges.”
Given the exchange rate, it won’t be affordable for many people, but soon locally sourced food won ’t be either. She says her members are not going to be able to protect consumers from heavy price increases for much longer.
“It's not only the weakening currency, it's all these other input costs that are coming through. So it's not going to be much longer.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.