Hon Chair, the debate on "the effectiveness of food production schemes in rural and peri-urban areas" is critical in alleviating and eradicating poverty, and in building a democratic society. This morning Mrs Thobeka Mabhija-Zuma echoed this in a debate in her campaign against cancer. She said that it was important for our country to make sure that, in promoting healthy living, we supported in a massive way the idea of small gardens and food production in our country.
This could assist in building up a massive number of smallholder farmers in our country for the future. There are many schemes that have been introduced in order to intervene in regard to food production in our country. It is a good thing that we as government have introduced. The most important point is that we must work together to make sure that we have stable food production for all our people in order to alleviate poverty in South Africa.
What concerns us is the fact that the schemes that we have, like Mafisa and many other financial schemes, which are supposed to intervene in our people's lives, do not reach the people they are supposed to reach. The problem is implementation. The government provides funding, but are we able to take the money that is supposed to be used to intervene in smallholder farming and give it to the people that are supposed to receive it?
There are initiatives, such as the one in Walmer in my constituency, of smallholder farmers who are producing food in our country. The problem is the necessary support and monitoring from the department, which I think should be looked into. As Cope, our concern is the amount of food which enters this country wrongly labelled. We were told today that Orion Cold Storage Company has been accused of bringing amounts of food into this country illegally, particularly pork hearts which are labelled as beef and sheep hearts. This is a threat to the security of our food in this country.
We must make sure that we produce our own local food. We must do this together in order to make sure that our nation is not under threat tomorrow because we cannot produce food any more. We as Cope say in this case today that a country without food cannot survive. We might have a food revolt in the country if we do not intervene as quickly as possible to make sure that each and every household in the country has food on its table.
Therefore, we as Cope say that we must strengthen the mechanisms in the department and also have certainty about those who have to be accountable, like those on the Ncera Farms who in the past have failed to produce food with the money that was provided by government. Thank you.