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CHAPTER 3
Sound bite: Within a few years the es-
tablishment of Safex had taken shape
– Mr Jannie de Villiers.
from certain circles because it retained many of the principles of the 1968 Act and,
in the opinion of the critics, was still drafted very much in the producers’ favour. It
was also thought that the draft Bill would make it possible for parties with vested
interests to influence the government’s policy, while statutory intervention was
still allowed in the market without any criteria according to which such intervention
had to be considered having been determined.
In July 1995 Minister Van Niekerk, who was still an appointee of the National Party
(NP) in theGovernment of National Unity, released aWhite Paper for Agriculture. This
was drafted taking the interim Constitution of South Africa and the government’s
Reconstruction and Development Programme into account. When introducing
it the minister pointed out that the changed political and social dispensation in
the country and the accompanying objectives, as well as South Africa’s entry into
international markets, would hold great challenges for agricultural producers too
– with respect to the domestic as well as the international market.
The declared objectives of the White Paper were to ensure equal access to agri-
culture in South Africa for all races and genders, to maintain and expand a sound
During an extraordinary Congress on
26 August 1993, NAMPO members real-
ised that changes to the maize marketing
system were inevitable.
On the eve of 1994 one fact was as clear as
daylight, namely that nothing would ever
be the same again.
Mielies/Maize
1993.
