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Farm workers, land reform and crime01 -02-07 |
Farm workers, land reform and crime
The Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomes the pledge by agriculture minister Lulu Xingwana and the agriculture MECs of the nine provinces to tackle the abuse of farm workers. We fully share the ministers' concern about the evictions and murders on farms and the "inhumane treatment and abuse of farm workers."
COSATU's 9th National Congress resolved that in 2007 it will give top priority to the plight of the country's farm workers, their families and communities, the vast majority of whom live in poverty, insecurity and fear, their lives unchanged since the dark days of apartheid.
COSATU also welcomes the announcement by the Department of Labour that they are to conduct a second round of workplace inspections in the Free State, targeting farmers who do not comply with labour laws, and we will help them to succeed.
Stories appear almost daily of attacks on farm workers. The MECs related incidents where farmers impound livestock belonging to farm dwellers, refuse to allow them to bury their families on farms, and demolish their homes, leaving them homeless.
In December 2006 the SABC reported that nearly 100 farm workers near Baltimore in Limpopo were going to spend Christmas without wages and with no water, when their employer allegedly cut their water supply after they went on strike demanding permission for time off during weekends so they could attend to family issues and funerals.
One well-publicised case speaks volumes about the official attitude to farm workers' families. Limpopo farmer, Marchel Nel, was found guilty of culpable homicide of 11-year-old Sello Pete, who was hit by a bullet from his gun. Yet all he suffered was a fine of R10 000 or five years' in jail, suspended for five years. The magistrate accepted the farmer's pathetic excuse that he had shot at what he thought was a stray dog!
Such stories illustrate dramatically the desperate plight of thousands of farm workers and their families. For them the country's progressive constitution and labour laws mean nothing. Ruthless, apartheid-era employers treat them little better than slaves, exploiting their labour for poverty wages and then throwing them out of their homes when they make demands for basic rights and a living wage.
This is the context in which we need to look at the question of crime on farms. COSATU is appalled at the levels of crime in South Africa, which blights the lives of so many of our communities. We agree with the MECs, who condemned the killing of farm workers and farm owners and called on all stakeholders to come together to find a lasting solution to these challenges.
Crime is a massive problem which must not be underestimated. We do however agree with the government that neither it should it be exaggerated, with statements to the effect that crime is completely out of control.
A study by the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) shows that there has been a steady and consistent decrease in most major crimes, particularly murder, over the past decade. The national murder rate decreased from 67 murders per 100 000 people in 1994 to 39.5 per 100 000 in 2006.
Car thefts, after peaking in 1999 when 107 448 were reported, dropped to 83 857 by 2005. Car hijacking, which peaked in 2002, when 15 846 cases were reported to the police, declined to 12 434 in 2005.
The figures are still terrible and hide a great deal of human suffering but need to be put into context.
The over-reaction of some liberal politicians and the media also gives a false impression that the victims of crime are predominantly white middle class people, who shout the loudest and have more access to the media but are not in fact the worst affected.
By far the most numerous victims of crime are the working class and the poor, who daily suffer assaults, muggings and robberies, which are often not even reported to the police, let alone the media.
Yet opinion poll findings on perceptions of crime reveal that although crime is seen overall as the greatest disadvantage to hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup, the percentage of black people who rated crime the most serious problem rose from 17.5% to 26,6% but is still way below the 35,5% of white people who agreed with that statement. So those most affected are the least pessimistic about the crime situation.
Concern about crime has however increased among people living in rural areas where crime is a particularly serious problem. But again it is not, as the media and farmers' unions suggest, just the farmers who suffer. The main victims are the farm workers and poor communities.
We unreservedly condemn the killing of farmers, but these acts have to be put into context of the desperate conditions which breed crime. Understanding the reasons for crime does not mean condoning it.
One of the underlying causes is the brutal treatment of farm workers already referred to. Another is the slow pace of land redistribution, and the increase in the number of evictions, as a result of "the scramble to join the multimillion-rand trophy-hunting and golf estate business by farmers and landowners", as the City Press put it on 28 January 2007.
" This is seen as a way for farmers to evade stringent land tenure legislation that protects the rights of farm workers and dwellers, and it has left a sense of burning anger in its wake."
The link between the land and crime crises was vividly illustrated by the case of Kenneth Eva, a KZN farm manager, who was killed by more than 250 people over a land dispute.
" Falakhe Ngwenya clearly remembers that day in October last year," reported City Press, "when murdered farm manager Kenneth Eva, accompanied by a band of camouflaged security guards, came to Esibhonsweni village to evict them. 'They came and told us to get out. When we said no, they brought in tractors and workmen to demolish our homes and impound our livestock'."
" Those who saw Ken Eva bludgeoned to death generally agree that he sealed his fate with the first few words of his ultimatum to hundreds of fearful and hostile black villagers living on the New Venture fruit farm. He began by accusing the villagers of occupying other people's land because they were living on property to which the farm's white owners held the title deeds."
COSATU backs the Young Communist League's call on the Ministry of Agriculture to develop a rural community strategy, which will... ensure that arable land is used for production purposes. They condemned the "arrogance displayed" by AgriSA and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) towards the Minister of Agriculture, whose leaders recently stormed out of a meeting with her, after she appealed to farmers to stop driving black villagers off their land.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is also seriously concerned by the conduct of TAU and Agri-SA on land and agrarian transformation. COSATU agrees with them that "this conduct confirms that most white farmers will do everything in their power to frustrate and sabotage any attempt to transform land and agriculture in line with the objectives of a democratic society like ours. If needs be the government should confiscate land so that we can meet our target of transferring land to the poor and the landless".
" The farmers have failed to comply with the sectoral determination to pay basic minimum wages to farm workers, they continue to fail to provide humane living places for the workers and in some areas they still practice the tot system. This un-acceptable behaviour has gone too far for too long and these thankless farmers still have the audacity to want to protect this horrible and inhumane behaviour and conduct against the people working and staying in the farms."
COSATU and its affiliate, the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) are committed to campaigning to end the low pay, violent abuse and insecurity that farm workers suffer. We will not rest until they can enjoy their legal rights and be treated with respect as part of the new South Africa. The first step is to recruit thousands of workers into FAWU so they can unite and fight to get minimum enforced standards ands start to transform their lives
Meanwhile COSATU is planning to meet Safety and Security Minister, Charles Nqakula, to convey the workers' concerns about the levels of crime and also the desperate social conditions that breed crime.