by Harold McGluwa, MPL – DA Northern Cape Provincial Leader
Premier Zamani Saul’s silence towards the endangered farmers of the Northern Cape speaks volumes about provincial government’s indifference towards the current food crisis caused by loadshedding.
Besides crops and livestock dying, lives and livelihoods are being affected by the extreme temperatures above 42 degrees Celsius, coupled with rolling blackouts and the consequent lack of water due to immobilised pumps.
Yet, while farmers staged a protest in Douglas against loadshedding and its crippling impact on farming and food security, the Premier’s office chooses to speak of the “frustrations of farmers” and the “inconvenience of loadshedding”, ignoring their utter desperation and the deadliness caused by Eskom’s failure.
It is alarming that provincial government chose to merely fall back on the promise of a stakeholder meeting with National Minister Thoko Didiza on the 24th January, that will have taken no less than two weeks to materialise. This, while every day that the situation is not responded to by government results in more devastation, greater food insecurity and further job losses.
Agriculture is guided by science and is extremely time sensitive. The delayed actions are a cause for concerns and disastrous for food security not only in South Africa but SADC countries too.
The Premier’s own office further advises suffering farmers to use renewable energy, again ignoring the immediate danger to agricultural yields, let alone the financial implications for farmers who are already drowning in debt due to battles waged against drought conditions, veld fires, flood waters and locust plagues.
Is government really so far removed from agriculture that they fail to recognize the gravity of the situation, the vastness of the farmland at stake and the significant financial burdens already carried by farmers?
The DA wants to know from the Premier why he is not urgently and directly responding to the cries for help by the province’s food producers. Why doesn’t he release solar power to farmers?
If Saul genuinely has compassion for the agricultural economy and is committed to averting a food security crisis, then he needs to act now to protect the current harvest season and make provision for rebates and subsidies for electricity, in particular financing schemes for alternate energy.
It is important that the Premier steps up to provide real time provincial leadership on this growing crisis.