On Monday the government’s security of tenure legislation will be put to the test in Ceres, the fruit-growing valley between the mountains known for its soft fruit and juice industries in the Western Cape. It’s the first time in the area that farm workers are fighting their eviction.
Martha Goliath is sitting in a tiny lounge in a relative’s home just outside Prince Alfred Hamlet. She and her partner, Alex Tobias, are waiting for Monday’s court hearing with some trepidation, fearing the farmer may retaliate.
Tobias works at a nearby brick factory. The couple is stranded without warm clothes or blankets. All their belongings were left behind under a tree on the farm they were evicted from with 24 hours’ notice in February.
“We lost everything. We don’t have warm clothes or blankets. We don’t know if they are still there,” says Goliath. “We want to return to look for our things.”
Goliath shows a handwritten two-page letter from the farmer. It’s addressed to Tobias and tells the couple to vacate their house on the farm within 24 hours at the latest at 6pm the following day. At the end the farmer signed it and Tobias scratched his name on the page as well. “He wanted to put other people in the house,” Goliath says quietly. “Tobias hadn’t worked on the farm for about two weeks after the farmer just sacked us.”
In the letter, the farmer demands R7,04 for food the couple had eaten while picking pears on the farm.
Slowly the couple’s sad tale emerges in the relative’s tiny two-roomed cement-brick house where two beds, a cupboard and a two- seater sofa compete with about 10 people, including three small children, for space. The couple moved there after their shack across the road started leaking in the recent rains.
At the end of January, Goliath and Tobias walked 40km from the Weltevrede farm to Ceres to go to the advice office. The couple have been working all their lives on different farms in the area.
On the road Goliath fell ill. They had to wait a couple of days in Ceres and then they started walking back. When they were approaching their farm the owner passed them in his bakkie, stopped and shouted, “You’re fired.”
Says Goliath: “He just terminated us right there on the road. For the next two weeks Tobias tried to get work in the area. Then the letter arrived.”
The couple moved their belongings out in the rain and left them under a tree. Two weeks later they returned to the advice office.
It was a battle to lay charges. Several people have told the Mail & Guardian the police don’t know the legislation which entitles evicted farm workers to lay charges. The local prosecutor allegedly said he did not want to prosecute the case. Only after Mbuyi Ralawe, of the Department of land Affairs in Worcester, intervened on behalf of the couple did the police investigate the case. Then a decision to prosecute was made. By early this week the police still had to inform the couple of their court date. That fell to the local advice office.
If the farmer is convicted in the criminal case, he can be sentenced to a fine and/or a jail term of up to two years.
For the time being Goliath takes courage from the blooming rose garden her “auntie” has managed to grow from the sandy soil.