Barely a month after Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen informed Parliament of his department’s bold plans to roll-out cannabis training and support, a pilot funding scheme has blown up in its face.

It’s emerged that the missing R20 million funding paid to a West Rand cannabis cultivation facility to train 200 farmers came from the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP), a state entity that remains at the heart of agricultural funding despite a history of consistent irregularities.

What's more, CASP's executive manager Ms Elder Mtshiza (pictured above), has managed to survive numerous investigations to remain in charge of the opaque organization that has distributed over R5 billion of taxpayer money since it replaced the old Agricultural Credit Act in 2004.

According to the Agricultural Marketing Council CASP has been working recently on a budget of about R1,5 billion a year with "approximately 3*% disbursed to subistence farmers, 60% to small-scale farmers with commercil viability and 2% to black commercial farmers who were already sustainable, but for one reason or another were unable to access private funding."

Steenhuisen told Parliament on 3 April 2025 in response to a written question on the status of the Cannabis Master Plan, that CASP had been identified as a primary entity for funding Government’s support for the hemp sector.  Steenhuisen said the Agriculture Department was extending financial support for the sector through various programmes, including “the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme, Blended Finance, and the Agri-BEE Framework.”

However, the Agriculture Minister would already have known about CASP’s lack of accountability because in another Parliamentary briefing, this one on 3 December 2024, he told  NCOP Agriculture, Land Reform and Mineral Resources Committee that there was a need for continuous monitoring of what was being achieved with the grants for the Comprehensive Agricultural Support, Ilima/Letsema and LandCare programmes. He said there would be “tighter monitoring of the provinces in rolling out agricultural projects.”

It's clear from the minutes of the briefing, that the Committee was unhappy with CUSP’s lack of transparency. ANC committee member Ms M Ndlangisa-Makaula said the organization’s activities in the Eastern Cape in particular, needed “a lot of redress”.

It is not clear where projects are located” she said. “Members need to visit them and report back to the Committee and the Department. Do the quarterly provincial meetings for monitoring progress also involve district and local municipalities?” she asked.

Minister Steenhuisen explained that CASP was designed to assist farmers who had no other chance of getting funding. It aimed to elevate the status of small-scale farmers, many of whom were on communal and leased land. They did not own land because of the skewed land policy of the past.

Steenhuisen said the Department met regularly with industry bodies and that “levies from trusts were used for farmer support, including transformation”.

Ms Mtshiza said the Department could provide evidence that where money was spent and that there was value for it. The Department was “not able to meet all the demands on it that arose from it communicating its success stories”. A breakdown of the training of farmers per province would be provided in writing. 

Five months later there has been no tabling of any training breakdown. Instead, the DA, ironically Steenhuisen’s own party, conducted an oversight visit on Silver Tree farm on Gauteng’s West Rand, which had been funded R20 million by CASP. There they could find no evidence of any training funded by the Minister who had championed CASP and promised to step up oversight.

Oversight is long overdue at CUSP, which the amaBhungane Investigative network discovered that the entity was implicated in the 2012 Estina Dairy Farm scandal, in which the Free State Agricultural Department lost R144 million in what turned out to be a fraudulent scheme linked to the Gupta empire.

amaBhungane revealed in February 2014 that the provincial agriculture department had paid grants directly into Estina’s account without market research, proper budgetary provision, monitoring of how the money was used, or compliance with supply chain procedures.

It further revealed that National Treasury had launched an investigation into CASP forcing the provincial government to withhold R30 million allocated to the body.

Then in September 2018, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) engaged the National Treasury to conduct a forensic audit on the indicators of possible fraud, financial irregularity, financial mismanagement and corruption relating to the appointment of Agridelight. 

This audit and investigation had to delve into subsequent operations and activities of projects funded by CASP.

The National Treasury began with the forensic audit and investigation in November 2018. The result has not been published.

The fact that CASP is still functioning under Mtshiza’s management is a testimony to a complete lack of oversight of the organization since it was established in 2004. The fact that Minister Steenhuisen has uncritically placed CASP at the centre of the Department’s cannabis funding scheme is astounding. He may well be rescued by his own party in Gauteng which has promised to unravel what went wrong with the Gauteng project, starting with Gauteng’s Agriculture Department.

Could it just be that CASP is on the cusp of closure?