The group managing director of Nerpo, Aggrey Mahanjana, says concerns such as stock theft and the Covid-19 Agricultural Disaster Support Fund were some of the pressing issues farmers raised during their meeting. OFM News’ Elsabé Richard spoke to Mahanjana about these issues as well as other concerns that came to light during the meeting…

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Mahanjana says the engagement with farmers in the North West follows a recent meeting between NERPO and the Provincial Eastern Cape government, to tackle the issue of stock theft and other related concerns from farming communities.

He says farmers are constantly seeking government intervention and therefore the organisation is availing itself to engage directly with farming communities and to provide tangible solutions where possible.

Mahanjana further adds that it seems that the police in the North West is not winning the battle with stock theft as farmers are still being plagued by this crime. He says, unfortunately, in some instances, police officials are caught participating in stock theft, which should not be the case.

Another serious concern raised by farmers was the issue around the release of 700 000 hectares of state land to emerging farmers for land reform by Minister of Agriculture, Thoko Didiza. Mahanjana says smallholder farmers raised various concerns around the available state land and says this process must be stopped as it is causing conflict. “That land is not a land that is sitting there open, that is a land which is occupied by farmers. Some of the land is not even occupied by farmers, it’s already villages occupied by people [squatters] who were never allocated the land,” says Mahanjana.

A third issue raised by North West farmers is the Covid-19 Agricultural Disaster Support Fund. Mahanjana says farmers are of the opinion that these funds were not properly managed. He explains that there are farmers who were not able to use their vouchers. He says the service providers who supply agricultural goods say that they have not been paid for almost three months. Mahanjana adds that, “if you were appointed as service provider to supply feed and you’ve got millions of millions of rands of feed that you have to give to these people, for not being paid for three months – you are killing your business”.

Furthermore, Mahanjana says what is striking after visiting the Eastern Cape and North West, is that farmers in these two provinces are singing the same tune. He says these issues will be brought before the premiers of the respective provinces. The organisation’s goal is to ultimately secure a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa in a bid to put a stop to these pressing issues.

NERPO will be visiting Limpopo this week, whereafter the organisation will pay a visit to farmers in the Free State, the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga.

OFM News