Steenhuisen denies Sakeliga’s BEE claims
Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen has denied allegations by
Sakeliga that his department is expanding Black Economic Empowerment and
establishing a “transformation fund”.
Last week, Sakeliga released a statement accusing Steenhuisen of “upholding AgriBEE and defending its implementation.”
Addressing the media in Cape Town on Tuesday, Steenhuisen dismissed the accusations as false and misleading.
Steenhuisen said the Department of Agriculture is not the custodian of BBBEE and that research would have shown that the gazetting and promulgation of the architecture and regulatory framework, including AgriBEE, was done by the Department of Trade and Industry.
“(Sakeliga CEO Piet) Le Roux seeks to falsely portray me as some BEE tsar in order to try and drive Sakeliga’s membership and income through manufacturing outrage and sensationalism. I wish today to set the record straight and refute Mr. Le Roux’s baseless sensationalism.”
Steeinhuisen added that the accusations of establishing a "transformation fund” were based on claims that he had gazetted several statutory levies.
“This is a statutory requirement for every minister of agriculture and has been since 1996. Le Roux of course, conveniently and purposely, leaves out the fact that these levies are not determined by the minister, but instead are voluntarily initiated by the 21 commodity groups themselves and these are then simply forwarded to the National Agricultural Marketing Council to investigate and initiate the report to the Minister for gazetting.”
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