Cubans don’t have the answers, ANC

If you want to criticise farmers, so they say, then don’t do it with your mouth full. Or, put another way, don’t bite the hand putting food on your table.

That needs to be emphasised to all governments, but especially ours, which sometimes evinces a distrust or enmity for our agricultural community, whether it be over land redistribution or farm murders.

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South Africa, in many respects, is a marginal country for farming, yet our commercial farmers manage to produce for us and for export.

That capability must be preserved. If it isn’t, then what you get – as you can see from our story on Cuba today – is the slow collapse of agriculture.

While the ANC is enamoured with its comrades in Havana and their supposedly idyllic island socialist paradise, the reality is that Cuba is a failing state.

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We already supply it with foreign exchange by paying for doctors to be educated there, for Cuban medical staff to be deployed here and for Cuban engineers to repair our military vehicles.

You don’t need to support an economic success story, do you? And therein lies the warning: follow the Cuban example at your peril, especially regarding food production.