The ongoing drought in the Eastern Cape is painting a troubling picture for food production, particularly among small-scale farmers and informal traders.
The water crisis has been exacerbated by a failure of the national department of water & sanitation to release funds to the Amathole District Municipality (ADM) for drought-relief projects.
In July, ADM submitted a request through the department of co-operative governance & traditional affairs for R121m funding from the National Treasury for these projects. Treasury, through the department of water & sanitation (DWS), committed R64m in October.
But ADM spokesperson Nonceba Madikizela-Vuso confirmed this week that the municipality had not received this amount “despite sending several reminders to DWS”.
The much-needed funds would be used to refurbish the Butterworth water treatment works, explore for groundwater in Mbhashe and to drill and equip boreholes in Mnquma and Mbhashe.
Department spokesperson Sputnik Ratau said the hold-up with the payment had been due to conversion of the water and sanitation infrastructure grant from Schedule 6B to Schedule 5B. The scheduling status means the funding can be used for different purposes by a municipality.
“The conversion letter was sent to ADM and thereafter it was requested to submit a revised implementation plan which has since been received on March 1,” Ratau said.
“It should be realised that it is not only Amathole that has been affected by this conversion and delay. Other affected municipalities are Sundays River Valley, Kouga, Beyers Naude, Koukamma, Chris Hani, Joe Gqabi, Ndlambe, Makana and OR Tambo.” Commercial sheep and cattle farmers in the district are already having to spend thousands of rands on feed for their livestock as they can no longer keep maize crops alive, resulting in rising debt levels.
The drought is not only having severe consequences for farmers, but also nurseries and co-operatives supplying them.
Komga Seedlings, which distributes seedlings to Mthatha, King William’s Town, Stutterheim and Alice, is down between 60% and 70% of its normal production, and has been forced into implementing short-time measures in a bid to save on its wage bill.
Some nursery owners and managers have described the situation as “critical” for small-scale and subsistence farmers who are unable to plant due to the lack or rain. “It has been a really hard run for us for the past four or five months, “ said Komga Seedlings manager Malcolm Swingburn.
“We have had to curtail our planting considerably. It’s gone completely dry. We are down 60% to 70% on our production and we’ve had to implement short-time for employees,” he said. Leigh Pagel, of Rainbow Seedlings, explained the situation was not affecting “bona fide” farmers as much as it was subsistence farmers and hawkers.
“What you find with the subsistence farmers is that if it rains a little bit, they suddenly want seedlings but then when it’s dry again they cancel their orders,” he said. Hawkers confirmed they were feeling the pinch because of the drought.
“Our profits are definitely down, because we are having to pay higher prices from our suppliers,” said Lungiswa Zoli, chairperson of the East London-based Gompo Hawkers Association. On Tuesday finance MEC Oscar Mabuyane revealed in his budget speech that 16, 000 jobs had been lost in the province’s agriculture sector, despite financial growth of 7.3% in the third quarter of 2018. He did not list all the reasons.
Agri SA has indicated that more than 30,000 jobs have been lost in the sector since January 2018 as a result of the drought. A survey of Agri SA members was conducted in December to assess the effect of the drought. It found that apart from R7bn lost in turnover as a result of the drought since January 2018, 70% of respondents struggled financially and more than 50% reported the need to retrench farmworkers and said the drought was devastating crops.
Doug Stern, president of Agri Eastern Cape, deemed the situation “a case of the chickens coming home to roost”.
“All the country’s provincial disaster management centres, except for the one in the Western Cape, have not been proactive.”..