DA leader and newly appointed agriculture minister John Steenhuisen has pledged to be the champion of the empowerment of black and emerging farmers in his new sector.
Steenhuisen said this week — in an interview given shortly after he was sworn into office by chief justice Raymond Zondo, along with a host of other ministers and deputy ministers from the blue party — that he planned to be “obsessed” with the upliftment of black and emerging farmers during his tenure.
Shortly after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Steenhuisen’s appointment last Sunday night, several black and emerging farmers’ organisations said they were keenly waiting to see his attitude towards implementing the government’s agri-BEE policy, which was introduced his ANC predecessors.
Whether you are a big commercial producer or a small emerging farmer, you’re going to have a minister who’s in your corner fighting for you and your industry
— John Steenhuisen
“I read some strange things from some people saying, ‘Oh, there’s a white person now in charge, so there goes the small black farmers’,” Steenhuisen said.
“There’s no party that has fought harder for the lot of small black farmers than the DA. It’s the DA that approached the human rights commission to make sure emerging black farmers on tribal trust land were given title deeds.
“I intend to be a strong fighter for everybody in the agriculture sector. Whether you are a big commercial producer or a small emerging farmer, you’re going to have a minister who’s in your corner fighting for you and your industry.
“And I will be obsessed with turning small farmers into big farmers, because [by doing so] you [not only] increase their product yield and profitability, but also their ability to employ more people.
“You would be crazy as the agriculture minister not to be putting out more extension services and assistance to smaller farmers to get them to improve their crop yield and grow, so that they employ more people.”
The uneasiness from black organisations about Steenhuisen's appointment stems from the party’s opposition to BEE and related transformation policies. The DA believes in levelling the playing field and ensuring people are given opportunities on merit, rather than to correct the injustices of the past.
Steenhuisen, as DA leader, had the freedom of choice among the portfolios available to his party but it had been important for him to take up a seat in the cabinet’s powerful economic cluster.
The agriculture sector employs almost 1-million people and contributes more than R145m to GDP.
“I have a passion for agriculture and what it can achieve. That’s why, as leader of the party, I have been engaging with agriculture organisations. Every year, I attend the Nampo harvest festival in Bothaville to talk to farming communities, [so that I] understand what issues are holding them back.
“It’s a department where you get some quick wins in terms of job creation and getting things done. I think it also helps, given the fact that you’ve got to go and knock on the doors of other ministries, that the leader of the second-largest party occupies that position, so that there’s a seriousness with which people deal with you when you’ve got to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem with railways here, [or] these municipalities are spilling sewage water into our irrigation schemes and affecting our crop outcomes.’ And lastly, it puts me in the economics cluster, and it’s important for the DA to be in the economics cluster.”
Agro-processing, biosecurity, revising “outdated” legislation and improving measures to prevent crop and livestock disease are some of the priority areas identified by Steenhuisen.
“If you look at economies that have moved from less developed to more developed, agriculture and agro-processing have always been the catalyst. There’s low-hanging fruit in this department because the large number of South Africans who are unemployed are largely unskilled. So agriculture and agro-processing give you an opportunity to absorb unskilled labour.”
Turning to the government of national unity (GNU), Steenhuisen said the DA was committed to ensuring its survival. He warned of dire consequences for the country if the GNU collapsed before its first five years in office had come to an end. If that happened, there was a greater risk of parties such as the EFF and the MK Party entering the national government.
“The implications would be terrible, because it would then force a reconfiguration where those anti-democratic forces entered the Union Buildings.
“Also, I think [the GNU] has to hold because we have seen what happens when you have instability at the local government level. Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay and eThekwini — we had instability there. Service delivery grinds to a halt, and the people suffer, so I think there must be maturity and give-and-take in the GNU. This is not co-option, it’s collaboration — and the DA has been clear we’re going in because we want to make a difference.”
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