Anne Eveleth
DEPARTMENT of Land Affairs labour tenant rights facilitator Busani Ngubane says many labour tenant eviction cases are complicated by the involvement of a plethora of unions and organisations operating in the Vryheid area.
“Some of these unions charge people money just to introduce them to a lawyer. Others get people to sign contracts with the farmers that they are farmworkers instead of labour tenants. Some of them give bad advice and then it is too late to take legal action,” he says.
Other land rights legal officials say some unions are “getting rich off these poor landless people”, and point to the flash cars driven by local unionists.
General United Workers Union of South Africa (Guwusa) president France Phillips has a black Mercedes parked outside, unusual for a rural union official, but denies he is getting rich at the expense of labour tenants. He says he only charges R10 monthly membership dues and his competitors in the KwaZulu Union of Farm Residents Organisation (KwaZufro) and the Mining, Agricultural, Commercial and Allied Workers Union of South Africa (Macawusa) say they charge even less. They all say “some other unions” are the culprits, but refuse to specify.
The unions point the finger back at the Department of Land Affairs, which they say has failed to help their members, and at the farmers whom they accuse of employing new tactics to kick tenants off their land. “The farmers are turning their farms into game reserves and telling the people, `If you don’t move, we’ll bring in lions next week’. Others are turning their farms into forests which employ less people,” says KwaZufro President Zakhe Mtshali.