For a few months, attributing bold ideological measures by the Department of Agriculture and its SOEs, which are out of step with the DA’s own policies and pre-election positions, to “muscle memory” worked for Minister Steenhuisen. Farmers now see this as an excuse, similar to the ANC’s habit of blaming apartheid for the collapse of public services and entrenched corruption.
None of the stakeholders who, alongside the DA in 2022, criticised the Agricultural and Agro-processing Master Plan (AAMP) were invited to the AAMP Executive Oversight Meeting scheduled for 7 October in Stellenbosch.
TLU SA was invited again after being expelled from the 2022 signing ceremony for seeking clarity on the term “transformation,” which appears 92 times in the Master Plan.
Six organisations that rejected the AAMP, namely SAAI, TLU SA, WRSA, the National Employers’ Association of South Africa (NEASA), the LWO Employers’ Organisation, and consumer organisations, met three times with the Department and SOEs, as well as with AAMP signatories. They tabled nine formal objections. None has been addressed.
These organisations believe they have been deliberately excluded for criticising ANC policies rooted in socialist ideology, the false “stolen land” and “farm worker exploitation” narratives, and unattainable social-engineering goals such as the new employment equity measures, the expropriation at nil compensation bill, and new regulations on so-called fake meat and plant- or insect-based protein alternatives.
No progress has been made on earlier promises to include the wildlife ranching industry, or even to solicit its input, in the AAMP.
Consistent with the ANC’s ideological tradition, trade unions were closely involved in designing the AAMP and are expressly acknowledged in the text, yet none of the employers’ organisations were invited.
The objecting organisations maintain that positions which were fundamentally wrong under an ANC minister do not become acceptable simply because the current minister is from the DA. They also question the mandate of AAMP signatories who claim to represent farmers.
“This is an agricultural master plan without farmers,” said Dr Theo de Jager of SAAI and Bennie van Zyl of TLU SA. “There is nothing in that plan to excite primary producers.”
Their principal objection is that profitability, sustainability, and value-chain efficiency are not meaningfully addressed in the AAMP text.
“Transformation can never be more important than profitability or sustainability. When transformation is elevated above sustainability, you get Eskom’s load-shedding era or the current state of public healthcare. When it trumps profitability, you end up where the SABC and Denel are today,” they added.
The DA supported this position in 2022 after the rushed and premature signing of the AAMP in Parliament. The undersigned expect Minister Steenhuisen to adhere to the DA’s pre-election policies.
