The Land Bank is set to play a more proactive role in the social welfare of farm workers, writes Scotch Tagwireyi
The Land Bank, South Africa’s major agricultural financier, is offering rewards and incentives to farmers to encourage them to provide social services and engage in ethical labour practices.
The initiative, known as Land Bank Social Accounting, is aimed at discouraging farmers from abusing their workers and encouraging them to provide health and educational facilities and proper housing for their workers.
The rewards and incentives, which will be in the form of discounted interest rate loans, will be given for creating jobs, improving living and working conditions, building proper housing, school, clinics on farms and adopting environmentally friendly farming practices.
“We are measuring the impact of our business on all stakeholders, and that includes the farmers and their workers. We are helping farmers to be ethically and morally responsible,” says the Land Bank’s social accountant, Kerien Pienaar.
She added that wine farmers in the Cape, for example, whose overseas clients demand that they should not use child labour, will benefit from this project.
“We will give farmers incentives – for example, on the type of labour contracts they have with their workers, whether they comply with the legislation. We will look at farm violence and child labour,” she says.
Physical abuse of farm workers by their employers, and other atrocities, are still happening on South African farms. Farm workers are also among the least paid and the most exploited workers in South Africa.
The South African Agriculture Plantation and Allied Union’s (SAAPAU) media and educational officer, Bheki Ngubane, says: “Things are still very bad in the farms. The majority of farmers don’t improve the conditions of their workers.” He added that the only schools on farms are primary schools, which merely prepare farm children for farm labour. According to the South Africa Agricultural Union’s (SAAU) chief director responsible for general and social issues, Kobus Kleynhanse, there are about 5 000 primary schools on farms.
Ngubane says that in places like the Eastern Cape there is still widespread use of child labour and wages are as low as R80 a month, with the highest wages at R500 a month.
Kleynhanse says he does not know any cases of child labour, but agrees that wages are low in the industry. “Farmers usually employ very young workers with no skills or work ethics, and their labour cannot be very expensive,” he says.
The Land Bank is obviously an important player in turning around the social lives of the agricultural employees. The bank finances more than 40% of commercial farmers and is the only institution that finances emerging black farmers. It is one of the three departments under the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs.
Despite social problems in the industry, agriculture is one of the important industries in South Africa. It contributes 4,1% of South Africa’s gross domestic product annually and provides employment for about one million people – 10% of the economically active population. It also contributes up to R14-billion to our economy, through foreign exchange, per year.
Although both SAAPAU and SAAU say they haven’t heard of the Land Bank’s proposed new initiative, the Land Bank Social Accounting Project will be launched in May 2000.
The Strauss commission, in 1996, recommended that the Land Bank should change its vision to reach previously disadvantaged people.
The commission was appointed by then minister of agriculture and land affairs Derek Hanekom to look into rural financing.
The Land Bank was established in 1912 and “has been dominated by male Afrikaner employees and has been focusing on financing white farmers only”, says Land Bank general manager Totsi Memela. Memela says the bank was poorly managed and only two branches out of 25 made profit.
However, there has been a major shake-up in the management and the structure of the bank since 1997.
At the head office alone the 42 layers of management were reduced to seven levels and the staff were reduced from 330 to 130.
This, according to Memela, has turned 22 of its branches into profit-making institutions.
According to Pienaar, the social accountability project is an extension of this internal transformation and is expected to improve the life of many farm workers.