Time is running out for a group of farmworkers who are waiting for state assistance to build new homes
Marianne Merten
A group of 14 Stellenbosch farm workers and their children may soon find themselves homeless following the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs’s failure to provide them with grants for the construction of new houses. This is despite a long-standing deal with the workers’ former employer to buy land for their resettlement.
The owners of Babin Farm, who retrenched the workers last July, agreed to buy land near Klapmuts “as their contribution to development”. But this cannot go ahead unless the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs provides grants for the construction of housing in terms of Section 4 of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act.
According to the section, the minister of land affairs can allocate grants for the purchase and/or development of land to ensure security of tenure for farm workers or former farm workers. In case the land purchase deal fails, evictions will take place.
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has repeatedly written to Western Cape land affairs officials since September last year in an attempt to finalise the matter.
Apparently the application for grants was referred by the department to the provincial housing department, which did not want to deal with the matter as the farm workers fell directly under the scope provided in the Extension of Security of Tenure Act.
Instead, LHR attorney Ricardo Wyngaard said he was verbally informed that “there is a moratorium on all projects in terms of the Act as declared by the minister of agriculture and land affairs [Thoko Didiza]. No official reasons were given for the moratorium.”
However, Land Affairs Director General Glen Thomas said the only moratorium currently in place affects new applications for land redistribution. The implementation of provisions of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act was not affected.
Meanwhile, attorneys for Babin Farm are still negotiating a price for the land to be registered in their names. But the former workers, who now work elsewhere, have been asked to sign an undertaking to vacate their current houses by June 1.
“We are keen to settle this and [it] should have been settled already,” said Babin Farm attorney Niel Dercksen. “The people should have been in their houses six months ago.”
Wyngaard said the families are reluctant to sign the consent form because they do not have the money to build homes without the help of the land affairs grants.
On January 25, an urgent fax sent by LHR to Didiza went unanswered. As did a fax sent last Friday.
Although an official from the minister’s office asked that the letter be refaxed to Cape Town this week, there has not been a response. Wyngaard said he was concerned that “time is running out”. The option on the land identified by both parties expires at the end of the month.