Farmers asked to fix Free State’s roads themselves

South Africa’s road infrastructure is falling apart. This is something that Farmer’s Weekly has reported on in great detail over the past few months.

However, nowhere is the poor state of the country’s roads more apparent than in the Free State.

In an article published on the Farmer’s Weekly website on 23 February (and briefly mentioned on page 11), senior journalist Annelie Coleman lists the number of practically impassable roads in the province: “[…] The R30, a major route linking Welkom and Bothaville, Klerksdorp and Orkney, [is] in danger of complete breakdown. […] This [is] also the case for the R711 road between Clarens and Ficksburg, which [forms] the gateway route to major tourism and agritourism destinations in the eastern Free State and Lesotho. […] The R26 between Ficksburg and Fouriesburg [has been named] the worst road in the province [by Free State Agriculture]. The R34 between Memel and Bothaspas [is] just as bad, and contractors working on the R34 [have] downed tools as they [are] not being paid. […] The R34, R59 and R505 between Wesselsbron, Makwassie and Hoopstad had also become virtually impassable.”

Functional roads are essential to the agriculture sector and the country’s food security, and many farmers have, over the years, taken it upon themselves to maintain roads as much as possible to improve the ease of doing business and transporting their produce or commodities from the farm to processors, ports and warehouses. However, in the above-mentioned article, Free State Agriculture says the organisation has now been asked to “assist” the province with fixing and maintaining its roads, and that farmers won’t be compensated for their contributions.

This is a shocking response from local government to the state of the province’s roads. One of the essential services that government should provide is the maintenance of roads. This is because good roads are crucial for conducting business, as well as providing people with basic services. Expecting the private sector (farmers, in this case) to fulfil this duty, without compensation, is shameful.

Despite the fact that farmers play an integral part in the employment strategy of the national government, it seems as though the Free State provincial government is doing as much as possible to make farming harder for current or aspiring farmers, rather than easier. While some of the issues farmers currently face, such as rising input costs, are not the fault of national or provincial governments, collapsing road infrastructure and ports ( see page 30) is a problem that these governments must fix, and neither farmers nor the private sector can be made responsible for this issue without government compensating them for the cost.

Many public-sector responsibilities are outsourced to private-sector entities, and while it may not be a bad idea in theory to also outsource road maintenance, the suggestion that this should be done as a service to society by farmers is simply outrageous, and indicates how little the Free State provincial government knows (or cares) about the current difficulties of farming. Unfortunately, farmers need roads in order to conduct their business, and despite this unjustified ‘request’ for ‘assistance’ and the lack of any compensation, even in the form of tax relief, farmers will undoubtedly continue to fix the roads where they can.