Sharon Hammond
Driving south of Malelane, in Mpumalanga, into a land of sugar cane fields and burnt- out minibus taxis, you enter a world where women own nothing and get little respect or recognition from men.
“Even if you work and buy something with your own money, it’s not yours, it’s your husband’s,” explains a long-time community worker in the Nkomazi area, Rachel Nkosi.
The intensity of such patriarchy in the region, where men treat women like children, is illustrated in a recent report by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) which did a survey on Nkomazi women involved in a DBSA-funded farming project.
It found that most women registered as sugar cane farmers as part of the Nkomazi Irrigation Expansion Programme do not, in reality, control their farms as legitimate decision-makers and “masters of the labour force”.
“Farms registered in the names of women are generally controlled by their sons, families of their deceased husbands, working husbands or aged fathers,” explains the author of the report, Dr At Fischer.
Women farmers are usually no more than managers and are often only labourers on their own farms, he adds.
What is promising, however, is that of the 291 commercial sugar cane farmers established as part of the project, almost a quarter are women.
Women were also often the driving force behind ensuring their husbands were selected as part of the project, which gives farmers between 2ha and 10ha farms to begin commercial sugar cane farming.
“Some farmers’ wives see their husband’s farms as an opportunity to help their families … and think of their labour on the cane fields, and that of other family members, as contributions to the welfare of the family,” explains Fischer.
The report highlights how local perceptions of men as providers who “see to the cattle and goats” and “look for jobs in Johannesburg” are slowly changing as many men fail to seek or find work to support their families.
“Most women are therefore compelled to work,” says Fischer.
He says up to 40% of Nkomazi women are forced to become hawkers because government jobs, farm work or work in towns such as Malelane and Komatipoort are limited.
Many women have, however, also taken advantage of the Nkomazi Irrigation Expansion Programme by applying for food plots in community gardens that were started to provide food security to poor families.
In total, 263 of the women have been given food plots after applying for them largely in an effort to minimise the costs of feeding their families, rather than earning money.
Any attempts to turn food gardens into commercial ventures, however, and boost income will mean the women will have to undergo extensive technical and marketing training and have access to comprehensive support programmes.
At the end of the day, though, these women still have to live with the fact that no matter how much blood and sweat they put into improving their lives and those of their children, their men will take ownership of all the fruits of their toil.
Nkosi, who through years of community work has listened to women lament how their husbands take their money and drink it away without offering to support the family, shakes her head.
“It will take a long time for women to start standing up for their rights. A long time,” she says.
This, after all, is a region where women submissively sit on the floor at meetings while men sit on benches, and where women seldom speak out, unless it is to agree with what the men have said. – African Eye News Service