John Steenhuisen, South Africa’s agriculture minister, has launched a stinging critique of Sakeliga, a former affiliate of AfriForum, accusing the organisation of "selective constitutionalism" while disregarding the structural inequalities plaguing the agriculture sector.

Sakeliga, previously known as AfriBusiness, and now an independent defender of small and medium business interests, has alleged that Steenhuisen spearheaded racially divisive reforms, including the introduction of AgriBEE policies - namely the use of licenses to unilaterally exclude any non-black-owned businesses from the economy.

Responding to these accusations on Tuesday, Steenhuisen described them as "falsehoods" designed to incite outrage and bolster Sakeliga’s influence.

Steenhuisen underscored the persistent economic disparities rooted in South Africa’s apartheid legacy, highlighting the country’s Gini coefficient of 0.63 as a stark indicator of inequality, ignoring the fact that inequality has in fact increased under the present regime, largely due to enrichment of a new black elite, whose state-dependent and corrupt wealth has shot them far above the incomes of the majority of the population, and fed a massive bureaucracy which is notorious around the world for waste and corruption.

The minister claimed, despite over 2 million recipients of land restitution for forced removals in the 20th century, that race-based land reform had simply not gone far enough. “The agriculture sector is not immune to these challenges,” he said, citing A Country of Two Agricultures by Wandile Sihlobo, which documents the enduring socio-economic divide.

Sihlobo is renowned as a perennial optimist, and a nonconfrontational interlocutor, but has consistently defended land reform as a harmless and necessary process, generally citing increased productivity from larger corporate farms as a sign of sectoral success, sweeping the collapse of state-appropriated agriculture projects under the carpet and providing PR cover for ANC reforms.

Steenhuisen lamented the lack of economic progress, attributing it to historical injustices and policy failures, particularly during what he called the “nine wasted years” of corruption and state capture, defending Ramaphosa's notoriously corrupt and negligent administration by gesturing to Jacob Zuma, whose policies were less radical, but empowered a cluster of economic elites that did not donate to the DA.

Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux accused Steenhuisen of introducing and enforcing AgriBEE policies, including the establishment of transformation funds. Le Roux argued that such measures could harm South Africa’s strained trade relations.

Steenhuisen dismissed these allegations as baseless. “The Department of Agriculture is not the custodian of BBBEE policy,” he noted, pointing out that the regulatory framework was gazetted by the Department of Trade and Industry in 2017, long before his tenure, denying any power to shape policy or change enforcement.

The minister also claimed that the race-based agricultural levies are voluntary contributions from industry stakeholders, not mandates from his department, eliding the fact that these contributions affect access to ANC patronage. He criticised Sakeliga for offering no constructive solutions to address inequality in agriculture.

Steenhuisen questioned Sakeliga’s motives and called for a "more nuanced" approach to tackling systemic inequality in the sector. “Slavish and misinformed criticism does nothing to address fairness or create solutions,” he said, leaving little doubt about his stance on the organisation’s tactics.