Company black-empowerment levels must be considered before firms benefit from international export agreements, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana said on Friday.
”The government has opened the doors for not one race, or one sex … but for all the people of South Africa,” she told agriculture sector partners in Boksburg.
Only white males had represented 10 to 12 big companies recently sent to initiate business with China, she charged, adding: ”It is not fair. It cannot be just.”
It could not be right for South Africa to ”export apartheid” to countries that had once supported it in the struggle against apartheid and were now doing business with it.
Speaking at a meeting on racial transformation in the agricultural sector, Xingwana announced that Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa had approved an application for the gazetting of the agricultural black-economic empowerment sector transformation charter.
”I now impatiently await the gazetting itself,” she said.
Her department was also sending letters to the industry asking for representatives to the AgriBEE Council, which it was in the process of finalising.
The Gauteng department of agriculture said on Friday that it would be rolling out a 12-month, seven phase AgriBEE plan from Monday.
”Eradication of racism in the agricultural sector and the country as a whole is an imperative that we dare not fail to achieve,” said Gauteng minister of agriculture Khabisi Mosunkutu.
Racist incidents such as that videotaped at the University of the Free State’s Reitz residence could not be allowed to continue, he said.
The video showed white students forcing black workers to eat food allegedly contaminated with urine.
”We can’t help realising how close is this thing,” said Mosunkutu.
”We know what happens on the farms. We are worried sick,” he said.
Had the video not been brought to light, no one would have known about it, he said.
Racist incidents were something many people did not talk about.
While racist actions had become irregular in the Gauteng farming community, information about them did come out from time to time.
”… It is there,” he said.
Mosunkutu took pains to emphasise that there were also ”heroic farmers” in the province who were trying to ensure ”things normalise” on their farms.
However, he described the road to substantial transformation as ”steep” and potentially ”gruelling”.
The Gauteng plan involves, among others, an inventory of all farms’ transformation status, an analysis of the gap between existing and emerging farms, a public awareness campaign and training and capacity building.
It aimed to develop the province’s first and second economies into one first world economy benefiting everyone; maximising the agriculture sector’s job-creation and poverty-alleviation contributions; and coordinating a framework for investment. — Sapa