Ramaphosa highlights agriculture as ‘vital part of SA growth story’

As a few white South Africans and farmers consider taking up US President Donald Trump’s offer of an expedited pathway to US citizenship, President Cyril Ramaphosa has emphasised that agriculture is a vital part of the country’s “growth story which must include equity and inclusion”.

Writing in his weekly newsletter on Monday, Ramaphosa said agriculture is “one of the most important sectors in South Africa’s economy”.

Agriculture

“The goods and services produced across the agricultural value chain underpin our country’s food security and account for a significant portion of South Africa’s exports.

“According to data from the Agbiz, last year, South Africa’s agricultural exports reached a record $13.7 billion. These agricultural exports are diverse, with 44% of these products exported to other African countries, 21% to Asia and the Middle East, 19% to the European Union and 6% to the Americas,” Ramaphosa said.

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Tranformation

However, Ramaphosa said there cannot be discussions on sustainable agriculture in South Africa without addressing issues of equity and inclusion in farming and land ownership.

“Transformation remains a challenge in agriculture. In his book, A Country of Two Agricultures, economist Wandile Sihlobo notes that black farmers currently only account for around 10% of the commercial output in South Africa’s agriculture. Our growth agenda must, therefore, have a bias towards the empowerment of black farmers.

“The inclusion of black farmers in commercial agriculture necessitates that land is made available to them. The ongoing land reform process and release of government land will continue to benefit emerging farmers and ensure that they, too, add to the growth of South Africa’s farming economy,” he said.

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Ramaphosa said South Africa’s farming sector is vital to the country’s growth.

“It has shown resilience in the past and will likely continue along this encouraging and promising path. It will, therefore, be critical that the sector embraces the onward march of transformation.

“It is in the interests of all South Africans that we have an agricultural sector that is representative and inclusive, that contributes to the growth of our economy and that produces the food our country needs,” Ramaphosa said.

Expropriation bill

Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Bill into law in December, setting new guidelines for land expropriation without compensation.

The Bill, which replaces the Expropriation Act of 1975, allows land expropriation without compensation if it’s in the public interest or for a public purpose.

It has irked Trump, who claimed that South Africa’s expropriation law is aimed at “seizing ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.

Equitable land

While Ramaphosa highlights equitable land distribution, Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi last month said South Africa should have passed a law to redistribute land equitably when the country’s final constitution was passed.

“We should have passed a law in 1994 already, or at least 1996 when the final constitution was passed to enable the state to redistribute land on an equitable basis. There is an injunction in the Constitution that requires the state to do that but the state has never passed it, and it has no explanation why it didn’t pass it.

“In fact, the ANC, in its conference of 2022, resolved to pass a land redistribution bill. We should, at the very least, enable the state to redistribute land in its own hands. The state has a lot of land. It can recycle large numbers of communities, it can generate income for those communities, and it could start large-scale agricultural projects in those properties, but it never did. Its priorities were elsewhere,” Ngcukaitobi said.

Ngcukaitobi stated that the land reform programme has been “hobbled by huge inefficiencies”.

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