A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME

THE

GRAIN AND OILSEED INDUSTRY

OF SOUTH AFRICA – A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME

ႇႄ

Moments and achievements

In 1998, the SPO awarded honorary Vice-chairmanship to Mr JD Tonkin.

Tonkin was a founding member of SAGIS and the Sorghum Forum, and a member of

the IGG SGS planning committee. He was a member of the latter committee when it

established the marketing company Sorghum SA (Pty) Ltd in 1997 to market sorghum.

Mr Pieter Morkel was appointed by Minister Hanekom (Agriculture) to represent the

producers on the liquidation committee of the Sorghum Board.

Merging and establishment of Grain SA

During 1997 Van Zyl, NAMPO’s General Manager, approached Ferreira of the WPO

and Morkel of the SPO at an SAAU general board meeting regarding the possibility

of merging the various producer organisations. Neither of them was in favour of a

merger with NAMPO at that stage, because they were not comfortable with what

they saw as NAMPO’s confrontational style towards the government and other role-

players like buyers. The SPO also feared dominance by NAMPO.

Following the dissolution of the Sorghum Board and the loss of financial support

associated with it, the SPO started experiencing financial problems. This, as well as

the influence of talks that the SPO had with other specialist organisations, convinced

the SPO to become involved as a party to the merger. The first opportunity was in

Bothaville in NAMPO’s board room on 17 November 1998 during a joint meeting

involving the management committees of the SPO, WPO, NOPO and NAMPO.

TheSPO’s dissolutionCongresswas heldon 9 June 1999 inStanderton. It was attended

by enough members to form a quorum in order to pass the resolutions regarding the

merger. At that stage, Morkel was the Chairperson of the SPO.

Following the dissolution of the SPO and the establishment of Grain SA, the sorghum

producers’ interests were taken care of by a specialist working group of Grain SA.

Other persons who served on the Executive during the existence of the

SPO were:

Messrs

EE du Plessis

J Scott

JV Roux

A Herbst

JJ van Niekerk

APJ van Zyl

A Odendaal

Mr Johan Swarts was appointed as the SPO’s first Manager.