Mayihlome News

Right now, when it comes to African agriculture, the self imposed and Western inclined gurus of African economic recovery and existence have come up with a new song and tune, that of African Food Security. That is African agriculture has been denominated to African Food Security and the ready made solution or antidote is Commercial Farming and by that they do not mean Commercial Peasant Agriculture but big time Commercial Farming/Agriculture. They claim this will solve African food shortage and feed the whole continent. However, what nobody talks about is what will happen to the hundred millions of African peasants who will miss their livelihood. Agriculture is the livelihood of eighty percent of Africans and that is peasant farming. Just like India and China, the antidote for Africa is to make peasant farming economically viable.

The South African BEE issue raised in the book does not warrant much comment. BEE basically is a product or part of a failed South African solution to a problem that is based on Settler Colonialism and its inherent process of dispossession, impoverishment and as such an exploitation of the native population (a situation that people are in denial about). The creation, from amongst the suffering natives, of a small black elite class of so called capitalists while the situation of dispossession and impoverishment is maintained as a fact accompli, protected and enshrined by liberal statutes of the country, will not solve the problem of inequality in the country.

However, no member of that Black elite group or Black petty bourgeois class, even if s/he is personally not a benefactor, is in a position to question BEE. In a situation that South Africa finds itself in, blind silence is the only way that the group or class can sustain and maintain itself to do other wise would be committing suicide. Let us be honest with our analysis. People need to be informed and educated not be dis/misinformed for manipulation. The book makes very sad reading.

By Izak Khomo

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