Durban - Deputy Agriculture Minister Bheki Cele has challenged the impoverished Shobashobane community, outside Port Shepstone, to refocus their minds from being consumers to becoming producers.
Cele made the comment after a young man had asked President Jacob Zuma to build a shopping mall in the area to help ease unemployment and poverty.
Cele had accompanied Zuma on a visit to the area to launch two hydroponic projects.
They also visited the graves of 19 victims of the Shobashobane massacre which shook the whole country on Christmas Day in 1995.
“No, young people will have to learn that there should be ploughing instead of going to malls.
“If you build malls all over the country, Pick n Pays would end up without food to sell. Whenever young people meet the president, they should say, ‘We are asking for agricultural tools.
“‘Give us a break with malls because they are built on land that should be used for agriculture and we are going to end up without food,’” Cele said.
The government had committed itself to supporting hydroponic projects, which would produce vegetables.
He said the last time he was in the area with Zuma was in 1995, to “collect 19 bodies”.
Zuma said that instead of black people buying shares in other businesses, they should consider starting their own businesses.
He said after black people had achieved liberation, they received political and security power, but were yet to achieve economic power.
“If you have political power while economic power is with people from other nations, you are facing serious problems. They would play a guitar and you will dance.”
He said the democratic government had come up with several policies to correct apartheid mistakes.
“It is still difficult, even though we have come up with many policies such as black economic empowerment. We have even come up with broad-based black economic empowerment, which has not worked since black people still do not own mines.
“Blacks are only allowed to buy shares. When you own shares, you do not have economic power because if that company closes down, you will lose everything,” he said.
The Mercury