Unlock Editor’s Digest Lock for Free
FT editor Roula Khalaf will select your favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
South Africa’s Parliament summons the state pension fund manager to explain how thousands of starving chickens relying on cannibalism ended in cases where the failure of their own poultry farms sparked domestic rage.
About 350,000 birds on the dawn farm in Mpumalanga, an hour east of Johannesburg, remained starved after the company ran out of money to buy feed and pay workers. This forced the animal welfare organization to send an emergency team of 75 staff to euthanize birds this week.
The case is the latest example of a company backed by a company whose taxpayer funds hit a wall amid allegations of disputes and lack of proper monitoring and accountability.
“What we found was a horrible thing. Many of the chickens that were still alive had large holes in their bodies as they were cannibalized by other birds.
In 2015, South Africa’s state pension manager, The Public Investment Corporation, managed R2.7TN ($148 billion) on behalf of more than one million civil servants, funding the purchase of Dawn by a consortium led by Matome Maponya Investments.
But Dawn soon encountered financial difficulties, and whistleblowers cited poor governance. In 2017, the photo injected more money to fully control the dawn and prevent it from collapse. The photos then overhauled the Daybreak board, which could not stop the loss.
The NSPCA has now filed criminal charges against Daybreak management under the Animal Protection Act. This is a penalty that can be a criminal conviction and a maximum sentence of one year. “This is not something we’ve seen on a scale like this before,” Appalsammy said.
Songgezo Zibi, chairman of the Congress’ Standing Committee on Public Accounts, told the Financial Times that photos will be summoned to answer questions about investment portfolios in the coming weeks.
“Daybreak Farms is definitely on the agenda,” he said.
Outside a dawn farm in Mpumalanga, demonstrations by company workers fired rubber bullets at protesters this week.
The workers said they have not been paid since March. One employee told local publications that farm workers “has no capacity to pay income, food, transportation, rent, tuition and debt.”
The photo said Wednesday that he was “deeply disturbed” by a report about dawn. “The board of directors and management at Dawn are responsible and responsible for the company’s operations and finances. This photo continues to support the daily report and provides capital allocation (to stabilize the business).”
Daybreak acknowledged “recent challenges related to animal welfare” in poultry farming operations. It informed that given the “significant financial constraints,” the company is “exploring options for placing the company in business rescue.”
Daybreak added that the company made “many fundraising requests” on the photos, but still awaited a response.
The incident marks the dramatic end of what was called “a landmark deal for black ownership in the agricultural sector.”
Critics say that the country’s positive policy of black empowerment, designed to introduce economic equality following apartheid, is an example of a country’s positive policy of action that has been derailed by transactions that benefit politically connected individuals.
“There have been many complaints from government officials about how dawn was managed over the years, but perhaps because of its political connections, none of these went anywhere,” said Tertia Marshall, a member of the Democratic Alliance, an opposition party in the region.
“This is an accusation of how economic empowerment for black people was implemented,” Marshall said.
