The Freedom Front Plus (FF+) has called on Agriculture Minister Willie Aucamp to remove Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) requirements for businesses applying for certain food import permits.

Each year, the Department of Agriculture publishes the conditions businesses must meet to obtain import permits. The permits allow businesses to import specified agricultural and food products at reduced duties, under market access arrangements South Africa agreed to through the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In a statement issued yesterday, FF+ MP Dr Wynand Boshoff criticised the latest conditions, which the department’s director-general, Mooketsa Ramasodi, published in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. According to Boshoff, they once again require applicants to comply with the agricultural sector’s BEE rules, known as the AgriBEE Sector Code.

Boshoff called this ironic, since the WTO was established specifically to promote free trade. He pointed to the WTO’s principle of non-discrimination, which states that a country “should not discriminate between its trading partners, and it should not discriminate between its own and foreign products, services or nationals”.

He acknowledged that the word “should” imposes no legal obligation, but argued that it signals a clear intention. South Africa, he said, openly discriminates against its own citizens on the basis of race.

Boshoff noted that business organisation Sakeliga is already involved in a court case over the same issue.

The FF+ has called on Aucamp to “strike down the legislation in his department” that it says discriminates and restricts competition, arguing that doing so could benefit South Africa’s food security.