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Augustus 2016
16
Talking productively to each
other about food security
T
he Sowetan
daily newspaper on 20 June of this year pub-
lished an insightful letter written by Mr Prince Mashele,
under the heading, ‘
Talk productively to Boers about
land
’. Mr Jannie de Villiers (CEO: Grain SA) personally re-
sponded on the views mentioned in the letter through a personal
letter to Mr Mashele – which
SA Graan/Grain
consequently decided
to publish.
Mr Prince Mashele’s letter
Dear Editor
Some very important event went unnoticed last month. It took
place in a dorpie called Bothaville in Free State, from May 16 to 20.
Every year farmers from across South Africa converge to celebrate
NAMPO Harvest Day at a venue called NAMPO Park in the sleepy
maize-farming town in the middle of nowhere.
You drive through vast expanses of maize and sunflower farms until,
suddenly, you get to a hive of activity where there are countless
4x4 bakkies that look like someone has just distributed them for free.
While you are still in awe of the 4x4s, your mind tells you that
what you are seeing can’t be true: An enormous fleet of private
aircraft and helicopters parked on a gravel terminal.
These 4x4s and helicopters bring farmers from all over the country,
not just to celebrate Harvest Day, but to showcase all manner of
animals, crops and giant agricultural machines you have seen only
on TV. More importantly, the farmers use the week at NAMPO
to have serious discussions on the state of agriculture in South
Africa. The discussions are called
Nation in Conversation
.
What strikes one is that the ‘Nation’ that is in ‘Conversation’ and is
almost all white, mainly Afrikaner.
Radical darkies might wonder, what do we have to do with Boers
meeting in a town whose name sounds like South Africa before
1994? It does not matter how radical you are, the breakfast and
lunch you have today was produced by the Boers who meet every
year at NAMPO to have a conversation.
If those Boers were to stop producing food, millions of us will
starve, literally. If they were to do that, black people will suddenly
know Bothaville, the place where Boers talk about our food. Have
you ever wondered where the tomatoes you buy from your super-
market come from, and who produces them? Does it occur to you
that without Boers you would not have pap?
What is striking about NAMPO Harvest Day is that not only are
there no black people, black politicians too are not there. Yet every
day our politicians announce all sorts of crazy ideas about what
they will do to expropriate land from whites and hand it over to black
people.
Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe brought hunger to his
people by behaving like our black politicians who propound lofty
ideas from their air-conditioned offices about land. If we do not
want black people to go hungry, we must first educate ourselves
about how modern farming works. This means that we must
stop shouting fancy slogans about land, without having a sound
discussion with those who feed us. We must never allow Boers
to talk to each other and claim that our nation is in conversation,
when we are not there.
If black people want to own land, and produce food for our nation,
we need to know how many black students are training to become
agronomists and how many of them have qualified as professional
farmers. Such are the black people who must be given land, not
MaMkhize and her hand hoe. MaMkhize can feed herself and her
grandchildren, but she cannot produce tomatoes for the fruit and
vegetable market.
To Afrikaners, land is an emotional possession, it reminds them of
their persecution by the British during and after the Anglo-Boer War.
Land is equally emotional for us blacks, it reopens the old wounds
of the Frontier Wars and the 1913 Land Act that rendered us
foreigners in our own country. But emotions will take us nowhere.
Both blacks and whites must come together and talk about how
to share land, and how to do it in a manner that does not disrupt
the food security of our people.
Mugabe probably had a good, sadistic feeling when he saw the
tears of a white farmer, but today his own black people are without
food. They are scattered all over the world as paupers. In South
Africa this can be avoided. The beginning would be for blacks to go
to Bothaville next year, and tell the Boers there that we want to be
part of the real ‘Nation in Conversation’.
Imagine Julius Malema at NAMPO Harvest Day, having a mature
conversation with Boers, telling them why he believes they must
share land with black people. It is possible that Malema could
come back with a better plan as to how blacks and whites can work
together in agriculture.
The greatest challenge facing South Africa is not scarcity of
resources, or resistance to change. We don’t talk to each other.
Blacks don’t talk to whites, and whites don’t talk to blacks. We are
good at shouting at each other. We don’t appreciate how much we
need each other.
Whether we like it or not, when Boers meet in Bothaville to talk
about food, black people are part of the conversation, even if they
are not there.
Jannie de Villiers’ response
Mr Mashele
Despite going unnoticed by some, Grain SA’s NAMPO Harvest
Day, a 4-day agricultural trade show is hosted annually in Botha-
ville, Free State. This year it attracted 75 116 visitors with 685 par-
ticipating exhibitors from 13 countries.
In what is referred to as the largest agricultural exhibition in
the Southern Hemisphere, the NAMPO Harvest Day serves as a
platform to support producers in increasing their productivity and
profitability in order to promote sustainable food security for the
country. And rightly so, true to form, NAMPO showcases everything
GRAIN SA
SA GRAAN/GRAIN
EDITORIAL TEAM
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