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12 April 2007

Premier of Limpopo Province, Mr Sello Moloto
MEC for Agriculture, Ms Dikeledi Magadza
Executive Mayor of the Vhembe District Councillor Irene Mutsila
Thulamela Mayor – Khosi Mukumbani
Chief Director of the Provincial Land Reform Office, Ms Essy Letswalo
Head of Department, Mr M B J Maloa
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
Good Afternoon.

I would firstly like to welcome you to the third day of this week long Imbizo which started on Tuesday, 10 April 2007, and expected to end on Tuesday, 17 April 2007.

Imbizo is a continuous effort by government leaders from all three spheres to assess the extent to which the programmes of government are fulfilling its mandate of poverty reduction and accelerate service delivery for better life for all.

The imbizo week is an important platform for mobilising communities to partner with government in order to accelerate service delivery and combat crime.

This week's proposed sub theme is "social mobilisation for development and safer communities"

I would also like to thank all those responsible for my visit this morning to Limpopo food basket of Levhubu, Tshivhase tea estate, Nwanedi state farm, and the nice I had tasted including my courtesy visit I paid to Musanda (Chief's Kraal).

Programme Director, Limpopo residents will recall that in December 2004, Sapekoe (Pty) Ltd made an announcement to retrench over 3 000 workers on four tea estates in the province. The reasons given at the time were that black tea production was not longer profitable in South Africa due to a number of issues, which among others included:
* high worker minimum wage rates
* no protection against tea imports from the Southern African Development Countries (SADC)
* the strong rand against the United States dollar
* land claims on both Makgoebaskloof and Vhembe tea estates
* high production cost structure.

It is needless to say that Sapekoe (Pty) Ltd then decided within different company structures to sell all tea specific technology to a company that have links in Malawi and Cameroon tea estates. It is also needless to say that it later emerged that Sapekoe had interests in these African tea estates. Most of the technology and equipment in Makgobaskloof, KwaZulu-Natal and small areas in the Eastern Cape were then sold off.

However, the Vhembe tea estates were not sold due to Limpopo Department of Agriculture (LDA) and Agricultural Rural Development Corporation (ARDC)'s insistence that there is future in tea. The department then put in place a turn around strategy for its 1 077 hectares tea estates. The turn around strategy is simple and is made up as follows:

* Ownership is cascaded to the community. The Traditional Council give family plot owners or out-growers 10 hectares of land each on the basis of user rights in the form of rental or lease for a number of agreed years. Plot owners then hire their own workers at their own agreed "Letsema-type" rates.
* Tea is processed and value added on the estates.
* The tea processing and the value added factory will be owned by the local community, local investors and an international investor to ensure overseas market exposure, access and product positioning.
* Tea will not be irrigated any more and the expected drop in production will be more than compensated for by the value added process. Electricity costs will come down and water can be traded for high value fruits and vegetables in these communities.
* Farmers or plot owners who wish not to work on the farms can rent/lease their land at productive values and thus earn rental income from operators.
* South Africans drink tea that is derived from Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Cameroon and a bit from Kenya. This has created havoc on South African consumers' taste buds. In this regard, I have been assured by Limpopo province and its leadership that a tea with a South African taste will be launched by 1 November 2007. South Africa will come to know and witness the real "makoya" or "yona yona". A proudly South Africa tea.

Programme Director, you will recall that last year in October, I visited the province and a number of issues as far as progress and developments are concerned were raised by the community.

Today, I am here to renew our pledge which is a national partnership to build a better life for all our people and to report to the people that from the 1 September last year the provincial Department of Agriculture and ARDC has since recruited management staff at Tshivhase and Makumbani tea estates. Their key activity until around 18 December 2006 was to prune "tea trees" back to "tea bushes".

About 1 450 tea pruning workers have been hired until the 21 December 2006. As from 1 January 2007 to date the two estates now jointly maintain about 2 154 workers for routine cleaning and management of the tea bushes. These workers take home R25,6 million in wages per annum.

The Makumbani tea factory is now in production process and about 95 545 kilogram of green leaves has been harvested and 60 751 kilogram black tea produced and at R9 kilogramme, a total of R547 000 was realised for March 2007.

Limpopo Department of Agriculture (LDA) together with their partners, MAN Ferrostaal South Africa (Pty) Ltd and Kenya experts have agreed that the tea estates will only be supported for a period ending on 31 March 2008; thereafter the project will be self-sustaining if the technology acquisition, quality experts and management regime, farmer selection criteria and good production practises are implemented.

Programme Director, LDA/ARDC has since agreed with their partners, MAN Ferrostal South Africa (Pty) Ltd, to acquire the skills of Kenyans to assist the province to revamp, add value to the estates and introduce value added technology.

At the same time the province will develop its own expertise by sending young farmers and qualified science graduates to do additional tertiary training on Kenyan tea institutions. I am told by the leadership that a mentorship programme is already underway for finalisation in this regard. The relationship with Kenya in this regard is informed by the fact that in Kenya, tea is a developmental crop and families do afford to take their children to universities out of tea proceeds. However, there are challenges that need to be acknowledged. And these are:

* The infrastructure issues, that is, the tar road between Tshivase and Mukumbani must be completed before the new rainy season, otherwise transporting of green leaves to Mukumbani will become a hazard and eventually lead to poor quality tea.
* The compounds where tea workers used to stay are roofed with asbestos and that has been declared a health hazard. Some funding is needed to deal with this hazard.
* There is also a need to build a research capacity in black tea at the Venda University of Technology with adequate support from the national Department and the Agricultural Research Council.
* Structural issues have been identified in the processing plant by the Kenyans and these will be corrected over a six months period after which the productivity of the Mukumbani factory will be improved significantly.

The Northern Tea Estate re-engineering, revitalisation, value added technology acquisition and diversifying will see the government investing about R44 million until 31 March 2008. An additional R20 million of this support will be a loan funding from MAN Ferrostaal South Africa (Pty) Ltd. The tea estates will also be handed back to the Tshivhase Territorial Council on 1 April 2008. It is at this stage that government will withdraw all its support and activities other than the farmer support services.

Just over a year ago, one of the biggest restitution settlements in South Africa was settled within this District in Makhado Municipality. Levubu was settled in favour of seven communities that included Masakona, Tshiitwani, Tshivhazwaulu, Tshakhuma, Ravele, Ratombo and Shigalo. This constitutes only phase one of Levubu and the official handover will take place before the end of this year. This means that communities will inherit 7 810 hectares of land producing fruits such as bananas, avocados, litchis and mangoes.

Recently the state farms along the Nwanedi River, in the Musina Municipality, which were also under the restitution claim have been settled in favour of the Rammbuda Community. Currently 117 commercial farmers are leasing 32 915 hectares of land at treasury rates for both livestock and vegetable production. While we would not encourage the community to remove the lessees, the farmers should also realise that the community has become landowners who deserve equitable compensation for opportunity costs if they will not be farming themselves.

It is also worth noting that the Nwanedi state farms have produced black entrepreneurs in tomato production and here one thinks of Ms Tshirande who won the local Female Farmer of the Year 2006 and was also a runner up in the national competition. It is hoped that together with the new land owners, Rammbuda Community, more farmers of this magnitude will be produced and the Nwanedi valley becoming the tomato valley capturing both national and SADC markets.

In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to inform the people of Limpopo that in the next eleven days South Africa will be hosting the 4th World Congress of Rural Women to be held from 23 to 25 April 2007 at the Durban International Convention Centre in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

The congress is an event held every four years under country specific themes. It was founded in Australia in 1994 and was later hosted by the United States of America in 1998, followed by Spain in 2002. This year it is Africa's turn. This year the theme is: "United in our diversity: working together towards total emancipation of rural women from poverty and hunger".

The World Congress of Rural Women is a forum which brings together rural women in civil society organisations and government at all levels. It provides government and civil society with an opportunity to address universal and wide-ranging issues confronting rural women. The congress will among other things focus on practical solutions and strategies to enable sustainable rural development, bring together rural women of the world, from different experiences to share with each other and learn from their different experiences, especially to form partnerships for development.

The congress will be preceded by the Pre Africa Consultation congress from the 19 to 21 April.

The Pre-Africa Consultation congress will enable women from the continent to deliberate on a common continental position as well as to collectively agree on the priority issues confronting the continent.

As our country's political and business leaders are getting ready for the massive world event, South Africa's Civil Society has chosen to believe that the nature of this event requires that rural women be both politically and socially empowered so as to inform their discussions and engage in rural development activities at grassroots. It is imperative that rural women from diverse segments of society participate in this congress in large numbers, as the policies that will be discussed by the leadership will impact mostly on their lives.

In this regard, a space at the congress, called the Rural Women's Voice tent, will be set up to meet the needs of rural women. The tent will be an integral part of the congress' forum for non-governmental organisations. The tent will be held concurrently with the Congress from 21 to 24 April.

As the hosting Ministry we are looking forward to receiving delegations from our rural communities world wide and also trust that the media gathered here this afternoon and some of whom will join us in KwaZulu-Natal will enable the various voices of rural women to be heard throughout and after the congress.

I thank you.

Issued by: Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs
12 April 2007
Source: Department of Agriculture (http://www.nda.agric.za)