The war between the government and organised agriculture on “racialised water use licence regulations” seems far from over following a move by Agri SA in which the farmer group submitted objections against the proposed regulations.
Agri SA has submitted its comments on the proposed Water Use Licence Applications, Amendment and Appeals Regulations that were published on 19 May 2023.
The draft regulations state that certain enterprises applying for water use licenses to take or store water will, in the future, have to allocate shares of up to 75% to black South Africans for such water use licenses to be granted.
The prescribed minimum black South African shareholding requirements of 25%, 50%, or 75% required for a water use license to succeed depends on the volume of water abstracted or stored or the area covered. Given the legal and food security implications of the regulations, it is essential that they are reviewed and substantially amended, Agri SA believes.
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A step backwards
Head of legal and policy at Agri SA Janse Rabie said it was important that the effort to build inclusive agriculture does not undermine the country’s food production.
“A further concern is that a draft regulation reduces transformation to just ownership, codes of practices issued under B-BBEE Act utilises a scorecard which consists of four key elements with ownership being only one. The other four are management control, skills development, enterprise and supplier development and socio-economic development,” he said.
Keith Middleton, a Free State commercial farmer, said the government was caught between a rock and a hard place because black people, especially farmers, are realising that there are two economic drivers which are land and water.
Middleton said the government did not get it wrong with the water use license regulations. However, they [the state], were desperate because they realised that the commercial sector has won cases against them. Now that government sees that water rights are in the hands of white farmers and a tradable commodity, they want to act, he added.
“We have made it clear that there is no land reform without water reform and vice versa. We realised that the government was buying land where water rights were being stripped off the land and transferred to other pieces of land.
“This led to irrigation farms being dysfunctional because how can you have a farm sold for irrigation purposes but does not have water on that land,” he said.
Finding common ground
Meanwhile, Rabie said it was critical that government takes all the elements into consideration as currently only racial transformation is included in the draft regulations.
Rabie said Agri SA, the government and other stakeholders had a fruitful meeting in June where it was agreed that they would work together to establish a water licensing regulatory framework that respects the laws of the country.
“The officials clarified that the new transformation requirements would only apply with respect to the 1.5% water resources in South Africa which have already been allocated.
“Agri SA welcomes this clarification and has included these parameters in our suggested reformulation of the regulations,” Rabie said.
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‘The government must wake up’
Middleton said government departments were working in silos when it comes to developing black farmers, which leads to slow progress in the growth and development of farmers.
“The issue of food security is something that the big commercial farmers use as a gun to our heads because it’s their trump card.
“To an extent, the government gives them the power to say that because the government lost the case of water rights against them. The government isn’t dealing with land issues and there is no political will to do so,” he said.
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