No drought relief for Ilembe farmers

The Ilembe District municipality and the rest of the province have not received any drought relief from the national department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (DAFF).

The Democratic Alliance has criticised the government for the delay.

Annette Steyn, DA DAFF shadow minister, said she had been shocked by a visit to KZN last week.

“Farmers in Hluhluwe received 270 millimetres of rain in the last two years – their yearly rainfall is normally 1200 millimetres – and leaving a dairy farm, I passed a tractor removing a dead cow from the road. Communal farmers are digging into streams to form pools where water could be found while most of the cattle are dying because they get stuck in the mud while trying to find water or eat poisonous plants out of desperation,” said Steyn.

She said KZN farmers have already lost 30 000 cattle this year as a result of the drought and subsistence farmers were expected to lose 60 percent of their herds soon. She said farmers were expected to lose their entire season’s crop if it did not rain within the next week.

“The implications of this has dire consequences for the farming and rural communities that desperately need aid to prevent the collapse of rural economies and livelihoods.

She said community members paid bribes to get water delivered to them while those who could not afford the bribes had to risk their lives to cross the N2 highway to fetch water on the other side of the road from a broken municipal pipe where litres of drinking water was running into the ground.

Steyn was told someone was killed last week trying to cross the N2 with a full bucket of water and added that government’s failure to gazette the drought-stricken areas will exacerbate the crisis.

“A statement released by the DAFF confirmed that it received disaster declaration confirmations from the North West and Free State but nothing from KZN, Mpumalanga and Limpopo,” said Steyn.

Disaster declarations are required prior to provinces submitting funding requests to national treasury through the national disaster management centre.

“The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and Land Bank plans to assist affected farmers by providing, among other things, soft loans but those can only be granted once disaster declarations have been made in terms of the Disaster Management Act, 2002.”

DAFF minister Senzeni Zokwana had told her that he had called a meeting with all the MEC’s and that cabinet has put together a task team to deal with the drought.

“Government should have held its inter-governmental meetings months, if not years, ago. Now is the time for serious action and implementation of disaster relief plans,” said Steyn.