This year marked100 years of the South African Sugar Research Institute (Sasri). It is a members’ research institute with significant public good but with a long way to go. What will the next 100 years look like? This falls on new director Dr Shadrack Moephuli, who was recruited from the Agricultural Research Council , where he was president and CEO.
He invited me to deliver a keynote address at the centenary celebrations of Sasri held on July 15 at KwaShukela, Mount Edgecombe, in Durban. Moephuli led me through a tour of stalls that buzzed with activity that reflected the early years, the evolution to now and more importantly the definition of the future.
The South African Sugar Association (Sasa) was led by long-standing executive director Trix Trikam, an Indian who retired after 26 years in November last year. In his intervention he emphasised the need for transformation. He has been succeeded by Sifiso Mhlaba, an agricultural economist who is now eight months into the role of CEO of Sasa.
The newly wedded executive duo of the Sasri CEO and Sasa CEO faces a challenge of defining the 100 years ahead as black African leadership takes the baton. Eyes are naturally on them because too often black Africans have simply become hired guns, button pushers of the rail tongue and not owners of the rail, employees at sugar cane industries and not owners of sugar cane fields.
Trikam did not mince his words on the quest for transformation in the sugar industry, which is also a message emphasised and echoed by Sasa independent chairperson Adv Fay Mukaddam. To embrace the challenge, the duo has to ask what does Sasri have to offer South Africa in its next 100 years.
Moephuli suggested the topic, “A century of Sasri: what does the next century hold in store?” Burdened by first Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s revelations of how drugs, corruption and crime hold South Africans and especially its youth back and second by a globally recognised Mandela Day, the centenary celebrations could not have put more pressure on me.
Seeking answers against this overwhelming background of Mkhwanazi’s impassioned pleas to birth a new nation, juxtaposed against the underwhelming address of the president last Sunday, sugar and sugarcoating the occasion were furthest from my mind.
The founding of the research institute central to the sugar industry 1n 1925, suggested an important model of development in the management of research and development as a public good. Though Sasa and Sasri are member-owned and therefore could represent a private-sector model, they actually are not private. The aggregation of their economic activity and deep engagement in research risk mitigation enjoins them with communities. Their research then catapults them into a co-operative and collaborative model that possesses huge public good delivery — a sorely needed solution for South Africa that perhaps helps us understand what as a nation we owe each other.
I could not help but recall my days as a research expert at Agricor in Bophuthatswana. In this space I thought through the role of participatory action research and its resultant self-liquidating catalytic role — manure for growth with transformation. In Trikam and his cohorts of researchers in Sasa and Sasri I could pick up this level of commitment.
In the hands of a revolution and revolutionaries inspired by systems research, the institution is in good hands.
At Stats SA where I worked for 34 years, I committed to taking the posture of action research, which should be based on measuring what we treasure. Such a posture, which sadly did not engage action research because of the strictures official statistics binds to one holding office, however, still created the natural place that let one play a self-liquidating catalytic role. As I left Stats SA, I knew the role I played and the way I played it embossed my exit. It was my declaration upon taking office that I will play a self-liquidating catalytic role that guarantees Stats SA will be better without my physical presence, and I will be better without Stats SA’s physical presence in me, but both Stats SA and I as the Statistician Emeritus will make the system of statistics greater.
That is what measuring what we treasure and doing such in a self-liquidating catalytic role does. So it is about what you do and how you do it, was my message to Sasri. A self-liquidating catalytic role led by action and participatory action research is the way to go.
So, while the Sasa and Sasru have bloodied sugar in their origin, it is clear that through time and especially in the 26 years of Trikam in charge, an inflection point began that needs to be accelerated with passion, enthusiasm and deep care. We have to step away from corruption as a badge of honour.
Extensive harm has been done. The soul of Babita Deokaran, a model civil servant, is not resting. However, she gains courage from Mkhwanazi. They inspire hope. A country with great potential turned into an alcoholic and serial killer who from one monumental blunder, plunder and murder stumbles to yet another, casting a shadowy spell on Mandela Day.
If the Indian indentured labour were to rise from the graves, or if Chief Bambatha the warrior were to tell his story, the smell of blood and the ire of grief would replace the sweetness. The sugar economy has blood all over the syrup. It was grand colonialism that in 1861 brought the first batch of indentured Indian labourers to the sugar cane fields in Durban and the 1906 Bambatha Rebellion against hut tax that sought to force black cheap labour on the fields.
Mkhwanazi’s impassioned plea against drugs and corruption does not fall far from a Bambatha Rebellion. So the next 100 years of the sugar industry should address transformation, as Trikam said when he handed over the baton.
The indentured Indians huddled together with blacks and coloureds in educational disadvantage, only to be awakened by Hendrik Verwoerd in September 1953 when he asked parliament: “What is the use of teaching a Bantu child mathematics when it can’t use it in practice?” The data of the statistician-general shows that from that day Indians went on an education rebellion and created an Indian revolution that would catapult them to perform better than whites by 2022, where now Indians surpass whites in post-school education.
The sweeter part of the sugar is its research agenda. Driven passionately in the 26 years of Trikam’s tenure, he built on the rich foundations of the 74 years that identified that studying and biomarking the science of sugar as a catalyst for future development is essential. In the hands of a revolution and revolutionaries inspired by systems research, the institution is in good hands. We need people who work in the interests of the profession.
The economics of sugar are huge. The statistician-general reported in 2024 that the metric tonnes of sugar cane are second only to maize. Almost 13-million metric tonnes of sugar cane were produced against 15-million metric tonnes of maize. Almost 90% of these sugar cane metric tonnes were produced in KwaZulu-Natal. Sugar has a significant weight in the consumer price index (CPI) as well as in the producer price index (PPI). When sugar turns sour, the country tastes the bitterness. For instance, the CPI changes in sugar was 6.8% in 2024 compared to 2023. That increase would harm especially poor families. Sugar is integral to the KZN economy, where according to the statistician-general about 90,000 are employed in this sector. Sugar is an R18bn turnover economy.
The immersion of farm systems research in the sugar economy and small growers’ interest, embedded as a crucial form of extension, is a major innovation in the science system. The integration of drone technology in surveillance of crop quality and disease points to an African saying that it takes a village to grow a child. Like a child, sugar cane is the business of every grower. The risks of contamination are huge in farm systems and this ecosystem is one of everyone being a keeper of everyone else. The sweetness of sugar is in its teaching of an existential protocol, where a violation is dealt with immediately, corruption of the crop is prohibited. Crop inspection and surveillance is everybody’s business.
This culture is what Mkhwanazi was talking about, and therefore we can learn a lot from the collaborative and co-operative system that the KwaShukele industry has adopted. It is a sweet system, a true ubuntu, one steeped in science and research. One that cannot take us by surprise because it is based on systems and design thinking. It is not governed like our out-of-the-blue discredited coup scare that fortunately died a natural death.
The history and monuments of the sugar industry were on display to be memorialised without sugarcoating. Emerging from this sorry past was the research history that still reflects racially biased participation but now has a Bambatha, a liberated Indian and a liberated white. All connected by science and research to direct them in the next 100 years.
When we speak truth and flush out lies from the brutal tongues of those elected to preside over our political life, then we can and should search for liberation in the cane. We can do with more Mkhwanazis, which is how Sasri as an institution has distinguished itself and especially in the recent past.
A self-liquidating catalytic Sasri staff provides the energy for Moephuli and counterpart Mhlaba to lead with research and science and distinguish themselves from tired black rail tongue-managers who do not own the rail. That way we can transcend the private, produce an unimaginable public good and set a great example for this mighty nation that can lead and live the legacy of Mandela, have the time to memorialise these heroes of liberation and not vulgarise and desecrate them, especially on the day they are supposed to be marked present to commemorate them.
• Dr Pali Lehohla is the former statistician-general of South Africa, director of Economic Modelling Academy, professor of practice at University of Johannesburg and research associate at Oxford University
For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za
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