Government incompetence and not apartheid is to blame for the Land Bank’s woes, says the Freedom Front Plus (FF+).
”Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulama Xingwana’s accusation that the current problems of the Land Bank are the direct result of apartheid is a lame excuse,” FF+ agriculture and land affairs spokesperson Pieter Groenewald said on Tuesday.
Apartheid was long dead, but ”the government uses it every time as an excuse to hide their own incompetence at governing the country”.
Groenewald was reacting to Xingwana’s telling a parliamentary committee earlier that the bank’s problems stemmed from the apartheid era.
”We are in this mess because of the apartheid government. The apartheid government never cared to develop black farmers,” she reportedly told the portfolio committee.
Groenewald said that since 1994, the government had not succeeded in putting a proper system in place to train and financially assist black, upcoming farmers.
”It is surely not the fault of apartheid and the previous governments. The African National Congress [ANC] government and the minister’s department furthermore do not make use of the goodwill of white farmers to assist black farmers through mentorships.”
He said Xingwana made use of every possible opportunity to falsely accuse white farmers of malice.
”It has long been time for the minister to stop putting the blame for her and the ANC government’s incompetence in governing the country on the shoulders of apartheid.
”She should rather put more energy into appointing better-suited financial managers at the Land Bank in order to assist upcoming black farmers, than wasting her energy in making fictitious enemies of white farmers,” he said.
The portfolio committee heard earlier on Tuesday that the Land Bank’s loans had shrunk from R9-billion to R5-billion, and that commercial banks had taken over the best clients, leaving the Land Bank with the higher-risk loans. — Sapa