Maravi

Empower rural people, feed the nation

Empower rural people, feed the nation
Written by Jacob Zuma
Friday, March 20, 2009 2:29:39 AM

The ANC considers rural development as a central pillar in our struggle against unemployment, poverty and inequality. People living in rural areas face the harshest conditions of poverty, food insecurity and lack of access to services on an almost daily basis.

Workers living in rural areas face the brunt of poverty. Many of them work long hours for poverty wages. Women in particular, who form the majority of residents in rural areas, face the burden of poverty.

This underlines the need for effective rural development programmes, ensuring that investment in infrastructure, services and training reaches those areas of the country that have been most adversely affected.

The ANC is committed to a comprehensive rural development strategy linked to agrarian reform, which builds the potential for rural sustainable livelihoods, particularly for African women.

Economic development in the rural areas needs to go beyond land and agrarian reform. It must include affordable financing to promote economic development; support programmes and training in assisting cooperatives and small enterprises; public sector ventures; and strategies to develop appropriate industries including light manufacturing, handicrafts, services, tourism etc. This also requires the development of the necessary economic infrastructure, including telecommunications services, roads and rail.

Part of ANC government measures to support rural development includes infrastructure development to produce thriving rural economies and ensure sustainable development. The expansion of basic infrastructure, which includes roads, electricity, water connections and public toilet systems in rural areas, becomes a central priority for the next administration. By 2014, all rural schools and health facilities will have adequate basic infrastructure.

The ANC recognises that the institution of traditional leadership has alegitimate role to play in rural communities on matters of custom and culture. At the same time, democratic practices need to be enhanced and respected in the rural areas. The government will improve its support to this institution, so that it can fully implement legislation on traditional leadership playing its appropriate role, with necessary public resources. The partnership between the government and this institution will be strengthened to focus more directly on rural development and fighting poverty.

The Freedom Charter says: "Rent and prices shall be lowered; food plentiful and no one shall go hungry."

The pursuit of household and national food security is a constitutional mandate of the ANC government. We have to create an environment that ensures that there is adequate food available to all, now and in the future, and that hunger is eradicated.

The ANC government is already putting in place an emergency food relief programme on a mass-scale, in the form of food assistance projects like soup kitchens to the poorest households and communities. This programme will be linked to existing mass mobilisation activities on the ground.

In the next five years, government will also introduce a "food for all" programme to procure and distribute basic foods at affordable prices to poor households and communities. Government will consider an appropriate institutional approach to implement to this programme.

The government will take active steps to procure and promote food production as the way to lessen our dependence on food imports.

Government will expand access to food production schemes in rural and peri-urban areas to grow their own food with implements, tractors, fertilisers and pesticides. Other government measures will support existing community schemes, which utilise land for food production in schools, health facilities, churches and urban and traditional authority areas.

Linked to food security is the land and agrarian reform programme. The Freedom Charter says that:

"Restrictions of land ownership on a racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger;

"The state shall help the peasants with implements, seed, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers;

"Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land; all shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose;

"People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labour and farm prisons shall be abolished."

The ANC government will work to intensify the land reform programme, to ensure that more land is in the hands of the rural poor. The government will provide the rural poor with technical skills and financial resources to productively use the land and to create sustainable livelihoods.

The ANC government will review the appropriateness of the existing land redistribution programme, introduce measures aimed at speeding up the pace of land reform and redistribution and promote land ownership by South Africans.

It will review the appropriateness of the existing land redistribution programme, introduce measures aimed at speeding up the pace of land reform and redistribution and promote land ownership by South Africans.

The ANC will also ensure that the land reform programme is integrated at provincial and local government levels.

Linked to the land reform programme will be an expanded agrarian reform programme. This programme will focus on the systematic promotion of agricultural co-operatives throughout the production cycle. There will also be active promotion of agro-processing in the agricultural sector. Government will develop support measures to ensure more access to markets and finance by small farmers.

The ANC government will ensure a much stronger link between land and agrarian reform programmes and water resource allocation so as to ensure that the best quality of water resources reach all our people, especially the poor.

There will be support measures for organised labour to organise and unionise farm workers. The capacity of the Department of Labour to enforce labour legislation will be strengthened. Strategies will be developed to improve the living conditions of farm workers including the provision of subsidised houses and other basic services to farm dwellers.

Labels: JACOB ZUMA, LAND REFORM

posted by MrK @ 2:29 AM