Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen has pushed again towards claims from enterprise discussion board Sakeliga that he’s driving Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) within the agricultural sector by means of statutory levies.
Speaking to the media in Parliament on Tuesday, Steenhuisen refuted Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux’s assertion, emphasizing that the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC)—not the Department of Agriculture—oversees BEE insurance policies within the sector.
“Mr le Roux is trying to cast me as a ‘BEE tsar’ to boost Sakeliga’s agenda,” Steenhuisen mentioned, describing the allegations as “baseless sensationalism” that distorts the precise goal of agricultural levies.
Steenhuisen famous that these voluntary levies have been in place since 1996 and are usually not set by the minister. He additionally clarified that he has no say in how the levies are allotted or which tasks they assist.
He defined that whereas the National Agricultural Marketing Council gives steerage on levy quantities, commodity organizations inside the sector decide how these funds are finally used. Steenhuisen dismissed le Roux’s recommendations of newly established “transformation funds,” calling them unfounded.