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Steenhuisen Hits Back At Allegations Made Against Him And Government
Steenhuisen hits back at allegations made against him and government
By Glenneis Kriel | 18 February 2025 | 3:12 pm
Minister John Steenhuisen of the Department of Agriculture called a media briefing at Parliament in Cape Town on Tuesday to address what he said was ‘misinformation being peddled by certain parties’.
From left: The Minister of Agriculture, John Steenhuisen, Angelo Petersen, chairperson of the NAMC, and Dr Simphiwe Ngqangweni, CEO of the NAMC briefed the media on misinformation at parliament on Tuesday. Photo: Glenneis Kriel
He first addressed the allegations made by Piet le Roux, CEO of Sakeliga, who claimed Steenhuisen introduced Agri BEE to the sector, d several transformation funds and sought to racialise water rights.
Steenhuisen said that agriculture was not the custodian of broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE), but that the architecture and regulatory framework, including AgriBEE, was managed by the Department of Trade and Industry.
The codes and practices were also signed by the then minister of Trade and Industry in 2017, nine years before Steenhuisen became minister of agriculture.
He added that South Africa remained an economically unjust society due to the legacy of apartheid and a history of legislative dispossession and discrimination.
The inequality caused by this, he said, was further exacerbated by policy and governance failures, “particularly during the nine wasted years of elite enrichment, corruption and state capture”.
He also said that he was not interested in engineering equality of outcome through race or other quotas, but wanted to promote equality of opportunity that would assist disadvantaged people to have a fair shot at accessing markets.
In terms of the allegations regarding the transformation funds, Steenhuisen said these stemmed from the publication of several statutory levies in the Government Gazette, which had been a statutory requirement for every minister of agriculture since 1996.
“These levies are not determined by the minister, but are voluntarily initiated by the commodity groups, and these are then simply forwarded to the National Agricultural Marketing Council to investigate and initiate the report to the minister for gazetting.”
He added that the commodity groups, not a minister or government, decided how the levies would be spent.
He also addressed US President Donald Trump signing an executive order that said the US would “establish a plan” to offer “persecuted Afrikaners” refugee status in the US, and said that he didn’t want any farmer leaving the country, regardless of race or religion.
“[Every farmer] I spoke to said they want to stay. That does not mean that they are not sitting without severe challenges. We need to address crime and fix the rails and ports, which is also why these are high on my agenda. By fixing ports and the railways, we might be able to quadruple production in the next five years.
Steenhuisen added that the current tension between the US and South Africa was threatening South Africa’s inclusion in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
“Losing AGOA would be a devastating blow, not only to farmers, farmworkers and rural communities, but it would also affect American consumers negatively,” he said.
“If South Africa did lose AGOA, government would hopefully be able to negotiate a trade deal with the United States to maintain market space. My biggest fear with this is that the United States might introduce punitive tariffs because we do not do things the way they wanted us to.”
So-called misinformation relating to the Preservation and Development of Agricultural Land Act was also addressed.
Steenhuisen clarified that the main goal of the Act was to protect agricultural land against development and mining, and that government had no intention of telling farmers what they can or cannot farm.
“If a farmer wants to plant canola in an area that is not suited for it, then I am not going to stop him. But he will take that risk upon himself and suffer the consequences of his decisions.”
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