Honourable Speaker, Polly Boshielo
Honourable Premier, Stanley Chupu Mathabatha Honourable Deputy Speaker, Lehlogonolo Masoga Honourable colleagues in the Executive Council Chief-Whip of the majority party, Falaza Mdaka Honourable Members of the Provincial Legislature, Leaders of Political Parties present here today,
House of Traditional Leaders led by Kgosi Malesela Dikgale Magoshi, Tihosi, Vho-Thovele
Members of the Limpopo Agricultural Advisory Council
Officials from the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
Officials from the Sister Department, Rural Development and Land Reform
Representatives of the Farming Community and Civil Society Organisation
Representatives of business sector and our sector partners, at various levels
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Honourable Speaker, it is that time of the year when we apply our minds on how to do more with less. This mammoth task is made even more daunting at this point in time because our province, like the rest of our country, is facing a tough test due the burgeoning unfavourable economic climate.
Notwithstanding the seemingly insurmountable odds in our midst, we all know that it is through collective action that we shall overcome and continue to soldier on towards our goal of bringing a better life to all as envisaged in the National Development Plan (NDP) in general and the Limpopo Development Plan (LDP) in particular.
The latter blueprint articulates a Limpopo Province specific vision of using agriculture as an engine that will drive the economy. National Outcome 7 deals with comprehensive rural development and reinforce the NDP’s vision of creating spatially, socially and economically well integrated rural areas, where residents have economic growth, food security and jobs as a result of agrarian transformation and infrastructure development programmes.
The residents must also access basic services and quality services with relative ease.
It is envisaged that by 2030 the agriculture and agro-processing sector should create 1 million jobs nationally, and 100 000 jobs provincially, as contribution to the national target. It is against this backdrop that the Revitalisation of Agriculture and Agro- processing Value Chain is one of the pillars within the nine-point plan to grow the economy and create employment.
Therefore, leadership and bold decisions are required on land reform, communal land tenure security, financial and technical support to farmers and the provision of social and physical infrastructure for successful implementation and achievement of this vision.
Honourable Speaker, booms and busts notwithstanding, we will certainly overcome the odds because we are guided by the will and wishes of the majority of our people who have mandated us to govern on their behalf. The undisputed legitimacy of our democracy is based on the fact that in line with the Freedom Charter, indeed the people are governing.
For example, this year our people will flock to the polls in droves to vote for their representatives in the local government tier of our democratic state, a level that is at the coalface of the delivery of services.
Honourable Speaker, death has earlier this year robbed us of two of our province’s pioneering economic freedom fighters and trailblazers, Habakkuk Shikoane and Mapudi Phasha. May their souls rest in peace. Both broke new ground and ventured into uncharted paths in the quest to promote meaningful economic participation of the majority before it became fashionable to some among us who lately have the proclivity to scream from the rooftops about this benign drive initiated decades ago by our glorious movement.
The budget of the Limpopo Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is being delivered during the month of April.
The April month is, to paraphrase poet Thomas Stern Elliot, “the cruellest month” when untimely death has undone some lives, yet later we ‘bred lilacs on the dead earth’.
It was during this month that Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, a young brave man from one of the townships in the vicinity of Tshwane faced the gallows with exemplary fortitude on 7th April 1978.
It was also on the 19th April 1993 that one of the most selfless activists of our revolution, the dyed-in-the –wool Marxist-Leninist Chris Thembisile Hani also succumbed to a volley of bullets “in a deed so foul that our country teetered on the brink of catastrophe”.
The blood prices paid by these two great sons of the soil were not in vain because it was yet another day during this month that the lilacs finally bloomed and blossomed to the fullest. On 27th April 1994 multitudes formed serpentine queues to cast their votes in the country’s first free and fair non-racial elections.
Honourable Speaker, our country has entered a trajectory characterised by a combination of declining economic growth, rising unemployment, spiralling inflation and a weakening currency, amongst others. As a result, our domestic economy is experiencing severe pressures. Read more [PDF]
