A business organization, SA, is stepping in to advocate for South African farmers facing a severe agricultural crisis, particularly due to foot-and-mouth disease, by challenging the state's monopolistic control and advocating for private sector solutions.
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Farmer Peter Keane from Moy River said
to us that the uh disaster that has hit
agriculture or in particular those who
breed with livestock in agriculture is
the worst since the render pest in 1897.
Well, the farmers seem to have been left
in the lurch pretty much everywhere you
look. And now along comes a business
organization SA who are going into bat
and very strongly for the farmers. Uh
Pit Laroo is the chief executive of Saka
and I can I can tell you from watching
their record when they get involved the
Peter, I'm sure farmers are delighted to
hear that you are throwing your hat into
the ring here, starting to get involved.
It's not really your area though,
agriculture. So why is a business body
getting involved in this area? Look,
when things become a systemic problem
endangering the economic order uh of
substantial size and impact, then we get
involved. We are there to uh safeguard a
flourishing economic order. And how the
government's been dealing with this foot
of mouth disease and how it's
proliferated is causing systemic
problems. It's the same with black
economic empowerment be uh which uh we
have in various industries become
involved not because we are experts in
the industry but because we recognize a
pattern of destructive political or
policy behavior and uh you know we've
learned some lessons in one domain and
we hope to apply those in another if the
underlying problem seems to have a
similar origin.
>> What does systemic mean?
>> It means that it's big. It means that
people tend to speak about industries.
You often get industry bodies and they
exist for a good reason. They understand
the dynamics of an industry. Uh but uh e
economies are interwoven and uh
sometimes when you destabilize one
so-called industry for long enough or
you cause a big enough problem there
then you have all sorts of consequences
in the processing of the products of
that industry later on in the inputs
going into that industry. And in the
case of agriculture um with as as has
been reported to us from the farming
industry and from bodies that we work
with uh really huge numbers uh in
finance and heads of cattle and
operations are now involved. So that's
why we consider it systemic. It's large
enough and it's impacting other sectors sufficiently.
sufficiently.
>> Saraka is all about state proofing.
Maybe you can explain how that works and
why this is relevant in the foot and
mouth disease [clears throat]
uh issue.
>> We consider a the state not a suitable
solution for the problems of South
Africa. Uh I mean in theory you could
say that's what the stole the state's
role is X Y and Z. But if the state is
absent or it lacks the capacity or if
sometimes it has uh the desire or
whether it desires to or just does it it
acts to intervene harmfully um then it's
no use discussing what the state's role
should be. You have to work with the
facts as they are and the facts in South
Africa are such that it's not much use
to rely on the state for improving
things that are going very wrong or uh
to improve uh policy um and and get
involved. So this means that sometimes
you need to force the state's hand or
you need to get get the state out of the
business of what private sector and
industry bodies can solve themselves.
And in this case we consider the desired
solution to be state proof. That means
for its success the answer to this
problem should not rely on the uh
goodwill of the state uh either its uh
changes in policy or its acts um of of
intervention. Uh we need to come up with
a solution that does not depend on some
minister changing uh but on allowing the
private sector to solve the problem. M
uh when you have a look at the way that
the state has handled foot and mouth
disease up to this point, it's not like
it's just arrived,
there are people and I suppose because
it because it's been handled in this
way, there are many who are now saying,
but hang on, this is a deliberate issue.
This is a deliberate attempt to destroy
the white farmers in South Africa. I've
had feedback from someone who was in the
room before being kicked out. he's not a
white person who said that within that
conversation it was a very deliberate
attempt let's let's uh let's sort these
guys out once and for all. Is there any
credence to what this person has told me
or indeed to what you have discovered in
your engagement with people in the
industry? I think it's fair to say that
the level of disastrous policy in South
Africa is often at least sometimes
inspired by um an animous is that the
correct word a a dislike for white
people. Um unfortunately that's be a lot
of be is in one way the good
interpretation is it's a desire to
improve uh the this the economic uh and
the social condition of black
communities. In that way it's a
desirable uh objective at least. But uh
in my dealings with people who try to
influence policy or who discuss politics
sometimes I have found that um the
desire is you know it's a bit like
communism or socialism. It's not a
desire to help other people go up even
though it's seld like that. It's
actually a dislike of certain classes of
people and the desire to see them uh
experience problems. However, in the
foot of mouth disease situation, I have
not seen that. Um, and no one's relayed
experiences like what you've just
relayed to me. So, I I haven't seen that
and I would be surprised to to see a big
plan to harm white farmers because
government's not really good at
executing big plans comprehensively and
systemically. So, it I would be
surprised if that's the main reason why
things are going bad. I think the
simpler explanation is uh a state that
um wants to intervene, wants to be in
control, doesn't have the capacity and
even if it had the capacity, it doesn't
have um the u the understanding um of of
what the the origins are. It's the state
continues to see itself as be have to be
having to be central to the solution
while many other diseases are perfectly
well dealt with farmers themselves. So
it's it's that old saying that uh 1%
conspiracy 99% cockup and in this case
it's an unholy cockup but not very funny
if you happen to be sitting on the other
side if you're a farmer and your herds
are being devastated. Just explain what
you meant that other diseases that are
contagious have been handled uh when the
state state wasn't involved with them.
>> Yes. Let me first say we act on in
cooperation with other role players. For
example, we've um benefited a lot from
uh uh meetings that have been held with
various industry role players. And in
this current litigation that we're
foreseeing, Alec, we sent out a press
release late last week to say that we're
now considering litigation. We're
cooperating with SAI uh and with Free
State Agriculture. And so Saka does not
understand the specifics of the
agricultural industry just as we don't
understand the specifics of any other
industry where we team up with role
players to help solve a problem that we
do understand. It's being we are being
told and we understand this to be the
case that many animal diseases are
perfectly well dealt with by farmers
themselves uh when they administer
either preventative or or treatment uh
medicine. And uh this uh in the in the
case of foot and mouth disease, the
state seems to insist that uh state
veterinarians should be involved or
should drive and be at the center of
this. In recent um weeks, there seems to
have been uh
sounds being made by the Minister of
Agriculture that private veterinarians
will be allowed to uh assist with this.
But we just think get the state
veterinarians out of the business just
since it's almost a national crisis now.
And in fact, the Minister of Agriculture
has said that he wants to have a a
national disaster declared well in when
when the fire is raging, uh you don't
prioritize monitoring and quality
control, especially from um state
veterinarians who don't have petrol in
their cars to reach all the various
places. So um I I'm just putting it to
you Alec that farmers relate to us,
veterinarians relate to us, industry
bodies relate to us that they can
perfectly deal uh with the
administration of this uh uh vaccine and
the medication they consider appropriate
without state intervention.
>> I farmed for a while and I certainly
applied my fair number of vaccines as
well as a farmer. So it nobody's telling
you um pork pies on that side. um they
farmers know how to do those kind of
things and it's in their interest to be
be competent at it. But but let's just
have a look at what's behind all of this
because you have a statemanaged
or state controlled disease. It's it's
spreading like wildfire. It's causing
untold damage and yet the farmers are
unable to protect themselves. And I
suppose that's why you get these
conspiracy maybe ideas that this is
deliberately an attempt to destroy white
farmers in South Africa. What would you
suggest is the rational way of
approaching this?
>> Well, the first point to make is that
calling it a state control disease is a
misnomer. The state has lost control of
the disease. And the whole idea of a
state control disease is that the state
gets involved when there are isolated
outbreaks and that the intervention is
such that it can stamp out that outbreak
and you deal with isolated cases from
time to time. Now it's wildly spread.
The state has lost control but it still
maintains the pretense of control. uh
and uh when you listen to the minister
of agriculture in his statements in
recent weeks, you'd see that uh he
emphasizes the importance of monitoring
and that's why it should maintain remain
a state control disease. Our position uh
and what we've discussed with industry
bodies and farmers is that the state can
call it whatever it likes. You can call
it a state monitor disease, state
control disease that does not uh allow
the state or make it just or fair or any
way acceptable for the state to prevent
the intervention of farmers and uh agri
businesses when there is a crisis which
is uh apparently both on the minister's
version and on the farmer's version and
on the industry body's version the the
state right now. It's like saying a uh
you know the whole mountain's burning
and uh because uh somehow mountain fires
are the state's uh responsibility. No
farmer may quell the fire when it
threatens his property and uh just
because it's a state property or
something. You know the whole idea of
state control should not mean um that
the farmer or the agri business cannot
intervene when it affects them. And um
so it's it's rather trying the state's
actually trying to make this a state
monopolized disease which is the reason
behind the disaster. Of course diseases
spread from time to time. There are
outbreaks all over the world but things
can be contained. There's not a shortage
of medication that the farmers tell us
they need and that the ind industry
bodies tell us they need. It exists all
over the world. There's just a a
shortage in South Africa and there's a
prohibition on the application of that
uh medication. And so that's that's the situation.
