South Africa will not declare national disaster over drought

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outh Africa will not declare a national disaster in response to its worst drought in a century as it hopes ample late rains will continue to improve the situation, deputy minister of agriculture Bheki Cele said on Sunday.

"For some reason God has been kind and late rains did come, and we think the 6 million tonnes (of maize) we were looking to import — we have downgraded that to four," he told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai.

The country’s largest grain producer group Grain SA called on the government last week to declare a national disaster — a move that would release emergency relief funds from the National Treasury to eligible farmers.

Mr Cele said out of South Africa’s nine provinces, seven had already declared a disaster but a nationwide declaration was not currently warranted.

"The only hope is that rains continue — if they do we might be out of the woods ... We will not declare a national disaster" said Mr Cele.

Mr Cele argued support had already been granted to a lot of farmers and more was on the way.