Do Grain SA and DTI/Itac really want more undernourishment?
Who said ‘government has to strike a balance between production on the one side and consumption on the other’? Yes, a producer forgetting he’s a consumer now that the wife does the shopping. Naturally he cares about his workers, sort of, but not as consumers either. And chances are good that economically-illiterate officialdom will oblige his white-minority producer-view and impoverish their black-majority voter-consumers. Among a zillion such examples, this time it’s Grain SA deputy GM Fanie Brink wanting hiked tariffs on maize, wheat and vegetable oil imports. Does he ever eat the national staple, putu? Does he consciously want government to take food from the bowls of many millions of already-undernourished South Africans just as (and because) the global market offers them bargain prices? No, he’s probably a decent chap faithfully reflecting his producer-membership’s rent-seeking desire for favours from a curiously willing government. The fault lies with any government that ever jac
