This is an official press release from Sakeliga.‍

After an engagement of several months, minister John Steenhuisen yesterday finally held a press conference but missed a key opportunity to clear up a critical question Sakeliga and others have put to him:

Will he uphold his department’s existing AgriBEE policy, or will he withdraw it and set out a new and positive vision for his department?

‍The department’s AgriBEE policy is a standing internal policy to expand BEE requirements with the explicit goal to make BEE compulsory in agriculture.

Rather than clearing things up, Minister Steenhuisen sought ways to defend the continuation of his predecessors’ race-based statutory “transformation” levies as provided for in his department’s AgriBEE policies. He also erroneously pleaded that he has no say on AgriBEE, in what appears to be a confusion of his own department’s internal and official AgriBEE Plan and AgriBEE Enforcement Guidelines, with the AgriBEE Sector Codes of the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition. And he somehow failed to acknowledge Sakeliga’s proactive engagement with him on AgriBEE since October 2024.

Whereas it was now crucial for the minister to signal a new direction, he instead left the impression that he intended to uphold the AgriBEE policies he inherited, but this time with his own justifications and with the intention to implement them more efficiently than his predecessors.

If Mr Steenhuisen wishes to correct this impression, it would be important to do so soon.

The minister’s alternative vision would need to include a repudiation of his predecessors’ AgriBEE Plan and AgriBEE Enforcement Guidelines, and a commitment to blocking and undoing regulations that restrict agricultural economic participation based on race where within his power.

The almost exclusive focus in his press conference on statutory levies was misplaced and curious.

Notwithstanding the minister’s various correct and incorrect claims about the statutory levies, these measures pale in comparison to the broader AgriBEE policies of the department, which are Sakeliga’s chief concern and which has been the main focus of our statements.

These policies are in opposition to the minister’s own party and his own stated position in 2024 as minister.

In 2023, his party justifiably objected when the department, then under his predecessor, issued regulations to restrict certain reduced-duty agricultural imports and exports on BEE grounds. His party called them “a new set of race quotas that will further devastate the South African economy” and laid a complaint with the European Union and United Kingdom for breach of international trade agreements.

Then, in October 2024, when we alerted him that his Director-General had reissued those same import-export restrictions, he personally informed us that he did not approve and intended to do something about it:

“Regrettably, there remain some matters across many departments that have developed as a form of “muscle memory” from previous administrations. These will take some time to iron out but we remain committed to doing so.”

Of the minister’s undertaking last year to provide us with feedback nothing came. Nor did he respond to our request for a meeting to discuss acceptable solutions. Instead, he issued further “transformation” regulations identical to those of his predecessors, while allowing the import-export restrictions to remain in place.

Contrary to Minister Steenhuisen’s protests, Sakeliga appreciates that deep reform does not come easily. That we have not initiated litigation against him and so far only publicly pointed out two implementations of AgriBEE under his tenure is testament to this.

However, if he does not distinguish his policies and regulations from his predecessors’, then he can expect Sakeliga to continue with and escalate our approach toward his department, begun well before his tenure, to oppose such policies.

The department’s AgriBEE policies are harmful, unlawful, and in violation of South Africa’s international trade obligations. Since implementation so far was thankfully highly inefficient, the country’s agriculture remains, on the whole, robust, but this cannot be taken for granted.

The AgriBEE policy is an example of the third wave of BEE, in which the government attempts to restrict permission to conduct economic activity unless it extracts sufficient BEE concessions.

For a five-minute explainer video by Sakeliga on the three waves of BEE, click here.

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