Mango farmer at a loss
Theft is the biggest challenge in the mango industry and is threatening the livelihood of farmers.
This is according to mango producer, Whiskey Kgabo, who leases a 888ha government farm at Ledzee just outside Tzaneen. He says that police and the justice system make it hard for him as a producer to make a profit as they refuse to arrest and prosecute mango thieves. “We are in the mango season and thieves strip our orchards and sell the green mangoes to atchar factories.” He says even if he catches a thief, the police refuse to arrest them.
“They ask how can I prove that it is my mangoes?” Kgabo has been farming in the Mopani region for the past 38 years. He says the government and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development contribute to the problem. “According to the lease, I was supposed to get a title deed to my farm after five years, but nine years later I still have not received anything.” In 2013 he employed more than 70 people which would increase to 300 during harvest time.
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Now he only has eight casual workers due to theft and the title deed delay. Kgabo and other farmers turned to the Southern African Agri Initiative (Saai) to get assistance with the title deed challenge. Saai believes that the land reform programme in South Africa has failed and the state has not yet succeeded in creating a class of profitable black farmers despite billions of Rand spent on it over the past 28 years. According to Dr. Theo de Jager, chairperson of Saai, beneficiaries of the redistribution programme are doomed to the eternal status of sub-farmers because they have to rent their land from the state.
“They are at the mercy of nepotism, maladministration, fraud, and inefficiency of the state, which makes it almost impossible for a black farmer to succeed as a farmer and perform commercially. Kgabo as a tenant of government land, cannot invest millions of Rand in fencing and security on the farm because he does not know if he may stay on the farm. He must first obtain certainty that he may reside on the farm by purchasing it before getting security for agricultural financing,” De Jager said.
