Government response to drought ‘hurts poor most’

THE government has failed to respond to the country’s national drought appropriately and the poor are bearing the burden of its dereliction.

“I don’t want to speak more about this poverty and drought because it turns me back to something. It makes me want to blame my government‚ which is not good.”

These are the words of David Baloyi‚ an emerging Limpopo farmer‚ who feels let down by the government in the wake of the country’s El Nino-induced drought.

The voices of Baloyi and his colleagues are among those presented in a drought report by organisation Oxfam‚ released yesterday‚ titled A Harvest of Dysfunction: Rethinking the Approach to Drought‚ its Causes and Impacts in South Africa.

The report found that the voices of the poor‚ and particularly women‚ were absent from the drought narrative that dominated media reports and government statements.

Neighbouring Baloyi in Limpopo is farmer Daniel Khosa‚ who said the government’s drought interventions‚ such as the provision of cattle feed‚ were insufficient.

“We are the emerging poor farmers and we didn’t get anything.”

The report found a narrow definition of drought limited the range of necessary relief offered by the government to the poor. Its researchers also found that government leaders used religious language when they spoke of the crisis‚ asking for rain in prayer and describing rain as a blessing‚ which fuelled the idea that the drought could not be managed or prepared for.

“We came to the conclusion the drought had been dysfunctional because it was badly managed‚ not because of lack of rainfall,” one of the researchers, Donna Hornby, said.

It found the drought and unregulated food markets had resulted in price increases that pushed people into acute hunger.

“The drought is a shock that lays bare the existing fault lines in society.

“Layer by layer‚ it strips away the resilience of those people who had little to begin with‚” Hornby said.

Oxfam has called on the government to declare the drought a national disaster and implement a universal disaster grant to respond to escalating food prices.

It has also called for the rethinking of the agriculture sector in water-scarce South Africa.

Small-scale farmers should be encouraged to keep smaller animals like sheep‚ goats and chickens during drought periods and cattle once it was over.

“South Africa is a dry country. It’s prone to recurrent droughts. With climate change and climate volatility‚ drought is the new normal‚” Hornby said.