Food Doesn't Just Grow On Trees

The Transvaal Agricultural Union is one of the last institutional voices of sanity left in South Africa. This is their latest SA Bulletin, published 14 August 2007.

South Africa's Food Security - Where Will The Buck Stop?

"Passing the buck" is an American phrase which is universally understood - someone, somewhere has to take responsibility for decisions and actions which affect us all. In South Africa, the buck is being passed by default, perhaps by design. Those elected to govern the country are abandoning their responsibilities to the extent that many facets of life are now privatized - security, schooling, health care to name a few. Citizens have realized the government is simply incapable of maintaining what it inherited in 1994, and private enterprise has stepped in to fill the gap.

Our previous Bulletin outlined some of the pitfalls inherent in the importation of food, given that the country's commercial agricultural sector is under threat. Assuming that this happens, what are the internal hazards South Africa could face if the bulk of our food comes from abroad?

If regulation over the quality and veracity of imported foods is beyond the country's control, who will assess food when it arrives in South Africa? Who are the people in whom we must place our trust to ensure that what comes in is in fact beyond reproach in terms of safety and cost?

If the current standards of accountability, integrity and capability are anything to go by, South Africa is in for a bumpy ride vis a vis food safety and availability. South Africa is unique - a strange dichotomy of a first world sector juxtaposed with stagnant third world conditions. Currently, first world standards are an uneasy norm, but the other world's encroachment is pervasive. Outside every South African city are squatter camps filled with millions of unemployable people, refugees and illegal aliens not only from Africa but from the Indian subcontinent and even South East Asia.

Parts of South Africa's big cities have been taken over by those whose modus vivendi is a far cry from what South Africa used to call its first world norm. Animals are slaughtered in flats and houses and on street corners, and the meat is sold openly to passers-by. Bones, skulls and leftover meat is left in the open to rot. Outside a Cape Town police station, policemen recently slaughtered a goat by hacking its genitals with a blunt knife while it was alive to "cleanse" the police station of "evil spirits". Are these the same policemen and/or inspectors who will be called in to investigate a food-handling depot after complaints by the public? Whose norms will be used - theirs or the first world's?

And who will bring to book the traditional healers who sell body parts under the bridges of Johannesburg's inner city, the healers who get supplies of human parts from corrupt nurses at hospitals who provide, inter alia, fat from white women? One healer purchased human fat in front of a reporter. (Citizen 18.1.06)

RECRUITMENT

It is a well-known fact that the government is recruiting staff for various state departments in India, Tunisia and other exotic lands. Opposition political parties and other groups have handed lists of qualified, unemployed white South Africans to the State President. Newspaper job pages and websites are replete with positions vacant, but it seems the last people on earth the government wants to employ are local whites. The advertisements in most cases state "the department is an equal opportunity employer and intends to promote equity according to our Equity Plan. Please indicate race, gender and disability", or similar phrases. The message is quite unambiguous, so whites do not waste time in applying.

At the end of last year, more than 9 000 government jobs (or 21% of the total) were on offer, the biggest advertisers for posts being the Health Department. This is significant because this department's officials inspect food and food handling, containers of imported edibles at ports and airports, abattoirs and the like. By recruiting foreigners, the government admits it cannot do the job it was elected to do. So who will be performing these vital tasks? (Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel told Parliament in February 2007 there were approximately one million vacancies in the South African economy. This reflects the huge lack of employable skills within the South African citizenry).

Foreigners may be qualified - and this is a moot point - but do they have the loyalty to this country qualified yet discarded whites have? And will the foreigners be susceptible to corruption, given that they will probably be hired on term contracts? Who is to stop an unscrupulous local food importer, one who obtained his contract via his political connections, simply paying off the foreign employee to sign off on second rate food, or even worse, food that should be rejected?

Recently one of Dubai's world-class port operations companies made a bid to handle imports and exports at important American ports. The proposal was rejected out of hand by American citizens. Would the Japanese allow Tunisians to inspect their food? Would the Germans allow Indians to supervise their abattoirs? Could it happen that within five to ten years, this country's government departments will be staffed by foreigners, while qualified whites either leave the country or sit idle?

If the country's administrative structures continue to crumble, who will bring new government employees to book, those who are corrupt enough to take bribes and sign off on food quality control, either at our ports, airports or storage depots? A study of the South African justice system by the United Nations last year uncovered a widespread perception of corruption, undue delays and inexperienced judicial officers. Corrupt magistrates, judges, police and court officials are frequently reported upon in the media.

If we cannot today successfully bring South African perpetrators to book because of a faulty judicial system, how will we control thousands of foreigners in key positions in our civil service, and especially where food and food handling is concerned?

And how do we know that the foreigners who are recruited are qualified? Document fraud in South Africa is rife, but it's possible to check for document veracity within the country, although this is becoming wobbly. But who is going to check the papers of foreigners who could simply bribe their way into key positions in the government?

At the moment food security and safety rests on the shoulders of a crucial few - the commercial farming sector comprising dedicated South African citizens, loyal to their country and to their land, and committed South Africans who work in the food handling sector, from the cold chain, to retail, to storage, to quality control, veterinary services, research and development, inspections, the hygienic slaughtering of cattle and the myriad other facets inherent in maintaining a reasonable standard of food security and the health of the nation.

If this coterie of people goes, even if it diminishes slowly, the rot will already have set in. The qualities of a responsible and dedicated citizenry are being dissipated - crime, corruption, sloth and a culture of entitlement are permeating all sectors of South Africa. The International Business Report released in February of this year cited 88% of businesses incurred increased costs for security, 65% reported decreased productivity and motivation of staff, and 41% reported a decrease in creativity, ingenuity and resourcefulness of staff.

These are the qualities which built South Africa. Those who have replaced the resourceful and the creative are not making the cut, and they know it. Instead of admitting their shortcomings, they are recruiting foreigners to take up the slack of their own incapacity. This is very risky, especially in the food arena. There is no room for mistakes. Once the first world sector has been rendered powerless by either accretion, dismissal or discrimination, the food and agriculture sector will be badly hit. We can go without new clothes, holidays and the latest cell phones, but we must eat three times a day. This is nature's law, and the SA government plays with fire when it sets out to weaken the influence of a productive local agricultural sector by believing it can be replaced by importing food, and hoping local standards will be maintained by employing foreigners in government and in municipalities. It is simply too much to hope for.