Eddie Koch and Vusi Khoza
THE Zoeknog coffee plantation near Acornhoek was the site of a novel labour dispute late last year. After a driver died in a motor vehicle accident, the 150-strong workforce went on strike and demanded rights to consult a sangoma and sniff out the witches among them who had caused the death.
Management and the local chief agreed the only way to end the dispute was for the workers to consult a herbalist, at their own expense and on condition that anyone identified would not be harmed.
“Many people were dying mysteriously. There were two women and the truck driver. After these people died we decided consult a powerful sangoma at Mbuzini (a mountain village near the Swaziland border),” says a woman who works at the factory and spoke on condition she was not named.
“We each paid in R170. Although we earn only R14 a day we felt this money was not too much because we had suffered much grief and we were committed to solve the mystery.”
The workforce travelled in two packed buses to the premises of Mahhoyane, a sangoma who is legendary for great witch-detecting powers. “He charged R10 000 for each bus and after three days he sniffed out three supervisors. We discovered they were killing people at work so that their friends and relatives could get their jobs,” she explains.
“It also emerged that these supervisors had xidachane (zombies) and that they were using these to kill cattle that were kept on the Zoeknog farm for meat and to steal the milk for their friends and family.” The three were stripped and smeared with tar, after which they had to pay the sangoma R100 each to get their clothes back. “We kept our word and did not harm them. The price they had to pay was to be dismissed.”
However when the buses arrived back in the village of Zoeknog, they were confronted by a crowd armed with pangas and axes. Management was forced to give the workers refuge inside the offices on the farm before they were dismissed and taken away by the police.
Labour relations at other factories in the Eastern Transvaal have been irritated by a recent rash of “witch” strikes. The Lowveld News reports at least three large companies near Nelspruit have sacked workers accused of being witches by their colleagues. These include the Manganese Metal Company and a firm called South African Dried Fruit.
Management reportedly refused, at first, to accept “superstitious and unfounded” accusations as a valid cause for dismissal but submitted to the demands after the workers staged go-slows, demonstrations and threats of industrial action.
Most unions are reluctant to associate themselves with the rank-and-file sentiments of their members but cannot afford to condemn the practise.
“We don’t have a position because these are traditional issues. However, we can’t underestimate their impact,” says Matthew Shongwe, a shop steward for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) at Manganese Metal.
The South African Cleaners, Security & Allied Workers Union (Sacsawu ) has adopted a more militant stance. Union representative Walker Mahlahlubane said: “Those convicted of being witches by a qualified sangoma should be dismissed immediately. This thing is cultural and thus valid. The witches deserve to be dismissed.”