“The farmer always carries a gun and sometimes, if a worker makes a mistake, he points the gun at the worker,” says a worker on a farm near Grahamstown. “The relationship between us and the farmer is bad,” he adds. “The farmer swears at us and calls us names like kaffir,” says a worker on another farm. “There are times when he beats us.”
Not all farmers in the Grahamstown region treat their workers like this, but a survey of 39 farms in the Grahamstown and Port Alfred districts concludes that “farm workers have seen very little qualitative change in their working and living conditions over the past 10 years”. The survey was conducted by the East Cape Agricultural Research Project (Ecarp), an NGO.
The sectoral determination in agriculture, which came into effect in March last year, has had little effect — primarily because the Eastern Cape Department of Labour seems incapable of enforcing compliance with its regulations. “Farmers are beginning to realise that the labour department is not going to enforce workers’ rights,” said farm worker Stefaans Pieterse. “The department is unable to solve any of our problems.”
In an attempt to find a way past this stalemate, the Ecarp convened a meeting between labour department officials and more than 100 farm-worker representatives from the Makana, Ndlambe and Sundays River areas in Grahamstown last Saturday. The meeting considered recommendations contained in an Ecarp submission to the labour department. Ecarp’s submission highlighted the “continued difficulties farm workers face with the lack of enforcement of labour rights”.
The facts are bleak enough. Sixty-eight percent of farm workers are not paid the minimum wage; 78% do not have housing meeting minimum standards; and more than 70% do not have adequate toilets or tap water.
The department’s officials listened as farm workers gave testimony to the conditions under which they live and labour. Common experiences include abusive attitudes of farmers, unpaid overtime work, poor standards of health and safety, and insecurity of tenure.
The testimony of women workers emphasised their status at the bottom of the rural pile. This is backed up by the Ecarp’s research: for example, 79% percent of the women surveyed do not get the minimum wage, compared to 61% of men. “Gender discrimination is rife in the workplace on farms,” says the Ecarp survey. “Farmers have made no effort to recognise women as workers in their own right.”
The officials squirmed as farm workers listed their experiences at their hands. “When we go to the labour department, we do not get proper assistance,” said one farm worker. “The department and farmers treat us like baboons,” said Pieterse. Another farm worker said simply: “The inspectors never come to our farm.”
Yet the meeting did not simply place the blame for the continued wretched working and living conditions of many farm workers on to under-performing labour department officials. Only one of the Ecarp recommendations to the department concerns these officials.
The first recommendation is that the department re-evaluates its inspection methods, but does not hesitate to recommend getting rid of inspectors who do not perform.
The second calls for the “urgent” establishment of an interdepartmental structure comprising the labour department and the departments of housing, land affairs, agriculture and social development to initiate an integrated approach to raising working and living conditions on farms.
The Ecarp also calls for careful monitoring of the rural labour market, and especially the impact of game farming. The Ecarp notes that “farm workers and dwellers have been adversely affected by the expansion of game farms”.
Fourth, the Ecarp recommends a collaborative effort of government departments, NGOs, farm-worker unions, and bodies such as the Human Rights and Gender commissions to spread awareness of, monitor and enforce compliance with farm-worker rights. And the department should also facilitate the development of the “organised capacity of farm workers”.
Livingstone Matiwane, the department’s deputy director of inspection and enforcement services, received the Ecarp submission at the meeting, and assured the Ecarp and farm workers that the department would “look at the recommendations”.
Matiwane said he is preparing a report on the Ecarp submission for the department. — ECN