Sugar industry players in South Africa are at loggerheads over millions of rand in transformation funding, with allegations of fronting and racism against black small-scale growers being made
This comes after the SA Farmers Development Association (Safda) on Sunday accused the SA Canegrowers of fronting, and condemned what it called disturbing anti-transformation tendencies.
Safda executive chairman Dr Siyabonga Madlala said black farmers had left the SA Canegrowers at the end of 2015 to form Safda because of the oppressive colonial legacy.
Madlala said black farmers were not going to allow SA Canegrowers to have a say in their affairs and dictate terms on the funding that was introduced through their activism for the benefit of black farmers.
It is disappointing that after a long journey of changing the laws of this industry to accommodate black small-scale farmers, introducing transformation-funding interventions to help sustain black small-scale farmers, and celebrating such strides as being progressive that the SA Canegrowers is showing its colonial colours once more by adopting disturbing tendencies of which is to block transformation funding meant to benefit black small-scale farmers, Madlala said.
