Tebogo Msimanga |
The Democratic Alliance (DA) says what was hailed as the Operation Hlasela flagship project by former Free State Premier Ace Magashule, has finally sunk. DA Free State Provincial Leader Roy Jankielsohn said an oversight visit to the approximately R150 million Diyatalawa Agri-Village project between Harrismith and Kestell in the Free State province has exposed the final destruction of the project.
“Residents in the village have reverted to trying to survive on what could be scavenged for scrap metal. All the dairy and beef cattle bought by the government over many years have been sold or eaten and the orchards are abandoned and dead”.
Jankielsohn said a bare skeleton of a once fully equipped dairy parlour remains, and the shed is empty of the farming equipment and vehicles it once housed.
Former President Jacob Zuma launched the Comprehensive Rural Development Project (CRDP) in 2009 and Diyatalawa was identified as one of the pilot sites for the project due to the extreme poverty of people living there.
Jankielsohn added that like most other agricultural projects in the Free State, this project has been used, similar to the Vrede Dairy Project, as a financial extraction vehicle to inflate prices and loot at the expense of the beneficiaries. “This included the construction of infrastructure that included a small guard house and gate at the cost of R600 000, cattle that were paid for with the sickly animals delivered and an apple orchard on which R10 million was spent with both the expenditure and production being fruitless”.
He further said the DA in the Free State legislature exposed the failure of collectivist projects as poor business models and vehicles for corruption over many years.
“The DA in the Free State believe that the only land reform models that will work are shared equity schemes in existing viable enterprises or investment and training in family-based agricultural production units”.
