Andrea Meeson Mzwandile Zuma has been a farmworker much of his adult life on land near Gingingdlovu, northwest of Stanger. Zuma has planted, weeded and harvested cane on sugar estates and private farms all over KwaZulu-Natal.
His hands – calloused, cut and stained blacker than his sunburnt skin – are testament to more than a quarter century of labour. His home – one room, tin roof, concrete floor and windowless – is shared with his wife and theElast two of his eight children.
Zuma is forthright about Aids: “There is the sickness we know, we have heard of. We can even see some people getting sick, but there isEsilence.” The silence is fuelled by fear – of being sick and unable to work and ofEridicule and isolation from an already disparate and unstable community. Zuma explains: “If you get too sick to work you lose money. Here there is no union and no time off for sickness. If you don’t work you don’t get paid. If your sickness is very serious and you need to go to hospital thenEyou must get there yourself. “The farmer may sometimes take you to a private doctor, but he takes R60Efor each visit off your wages at the end of the month. If you are sick for more than a week there is a good chance you will lose your job.
“There is also the problem of other people in the community talking. If you are sick they make jokes about you, I have seen it. People are afraid to talkEabout sickness.” This fear and foreboding is alive among Zuma’s fellow workers on the neighbouring Wynston cane farm. An impromptu gathering around the openEwater tank in the middle of the workers’ living area reveals an initialEstony silence when the question of HIV/Aids is raised.EAfter a while, the silence breaks as individuals get to air their views on the subject. A younger man complains that the umlungu gives out condoms because “he doesn’t want us to have children”. An elderly man suggests that byEusing condoms he will be “putting that plastic in places where it doesn’tEbelong”. A teenaged boy is happy to hear there are condoms for women because “women must also wear them”. He wants to know if the condom and the femidom can be used at the same time. E The people speak in more general terms about the poverty and disease they suffer. “We are often sick in this place – you can see how filthy it is. We have running stomachs, malaria, chest problems and there is no money forEhospital or doctors. Other places have clinics but here we have nothing.”E
About 200m across the veld is the Amatikulu sugar mill, owned andEoperated by Tongaat- Hulett Sugar, a main player in the industry. The millEoperates an on-site clinic for its workers and the company is trainingEHIV/Aids peer educators at its mill at Maidstone, further south.E Unfortunately clinic facilities and peer educators are rarely available to the thousands of agricultural workers who work on surrounding farms,Ewhether private or company owned. This despite the fact that these same farms supply the raw product that keeps the mills in business andEagricultural workers who harvest the cane are likely more vulnerable to HIV infection due in part to the appalling conditions under which many of themElive and work. According to Aids Analysis Africa, an Internet publication, evidence of the effect of HIV/Aids on business in South Africa suggests that “the cost of the disease will depend on the type of company, theEskills levels and replaceability of employees, the sector it operates inEand the benefits it provides”. Industries that are labour intensive andEthose that depend on migrant labour are likely to be the most seriously affected. The publication also said “labour and sector productivity are directly affected by any factors contributing to HIVEtransmission and subsequent morbidity and mortality”. These includeErotating and seasonal labour, lack of community cohesion, gender relations, culture and livelihood strategies, lack of education and recreationalEopportunities, and poor access to treatment for sexually transmitted infections. All of these factors are part and parcel of the lives ofEagricultural workers. Another article on HIV/Aids and development, published by UNAids, quotes a report from a sugar estate in an unidentified African country quantifyingEthe cost of HIV infection as follows: “8 000 days of labour lost to illnessEover four years; 50% drop in processed sugar recovered from raw cane overEthe same time period; fivefold increase in funerals over eight years;Etenfold increase in health costs and over three-quarters of all illness related to HIV infection.”E These alarming statistics have not gone entirely unnoticed by the corporate giants in the South African sugar industry. Both Tongaat-Hulett and Illovo have to their credit long-standing HIV/Aids policies and guidelines inEaccordance with the present Labour Relations Act. The companies have had pilot HIV/Aids education and intervention programmesEat Maidstone and Umfolozi sugar mills respectively for some time. TheseEprogrammes, according to management and medical personnel at both companies,Eare reaching all employees in sugar mills across KwaZulu-Natal. Condom distribution and on-site education at Illovo’s Umfolozi mill has resulted in a reduction in cases of sexually transmitted diseases from 40 a month in 1998 to just five a month on average this year, according to chief medical officer Dr ShaunECheevers. He says that access to free health care, counselling, voluntary testing for HIV and basic treatment for those presenting with opportunisticEinfections extend to workers in both the milling and agricultural sectors at Illovo. Questions relating to the conditions of employment and lifestyle of theElower bands of agricultural workers, and the effect these factors might haveEon the prevalence of HIV infection on Illovo estates, are brushed aside by Cheevers. “There is no scientific evidence to support the argument that improving the conditions is going to stop the epidemic,” he says. These claims are refuted by farm workers and union shop stewards. The progressive HIV/Aids programme at Umfolozi is not available for public scrutiny. Permission to tour the facilities and speak to clinic staff and workers benefiting from the programme is often denied.E
Tongaat-Hulett’s industrial relations manager for the sugar division, Alan Fuggle, cites a bruising relationship with the business press in particularEas a possible reason for management’s hesitancy to permit journalists to visit the company’s HIV/Aids programme at Maidstone mill. Not evenEthe medical personnel managing the programme are prepared to speak without the go-ahead from the CEO for public affairs. The sugar industry, comprising both growers and millers, represents one ofEthe biggest employers of unskilled and semi-skilled labour inEKwaZulu-Natal. Fuggle admits that HIV/ Aids has to date had a negligible effect on the sugar industry, even in countries such as Zimbabwe where the epidemic isEmuch further down the road. This is likely due to the fact that agriculture is largely a low-tech and labour-intensive business whose workers are easily replaceable.E According to Rodger Stewart, a fourth generation sugar cane farmer and current chair of the South African Canegrowers’ Association (Sasa), HIV/Aids is not the most pressing issue on the agenda for cane farmers.
Following a review of the Aids education programme in 1994, Sasa, which represents millers and growers, decided that the focus of the epidemic hadEshifted and that due to industry restructuring millers and growers would now be individually responsible for HIV/Aids education and preventionEprogrammes.
Stewart, himself a model large-scale farmer, is doing very little about HIV/Aids.
Condoms are dispensed on his farm, but neither he nor the farm’s human resources manager, Sihle Nkomo, can give an indication of how many areEdispensed on average each month. They are also vague about the types of illness affecting workers on the farm. Nkomo suggests that “sniffles and sneezes” are common ailments and Stewart admits that tuberculosis (TB) may affect some,Ebut “TB has been around for years”.
While signs of Aids fatigue and indifference are endemic in the industry, the response from the trade union representing large numbers of farmEworkers has been almost non-existent. The South African Agricultural, Plantation and Allied Workers’ Union (Saapawu), an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, represents 20E000 organised agricultural and industry workers across the country. A large number of these work in the sugar industry. Richard Gumede is a Saapawu organiser in KwaZulu-Natal and is the first to admit that the union’s efforts to reach its members on the issue ofEHIV/Aids have been totally inadequate. “As a union we have failed to address the issue of HIV/Aids,” says Gumede.E”The interests of the agricultural workers, in particular those who are the slaves of industry, are not guarded.” Sipho Khumalo, the union’s recently elected general secretary, agrees that political issues hampered efforts to get work done in the past, but heEbelieves that there is more vision within Saapawu’s leadership structureEtoday.
“We are aware of the critical battles we face to bring the union up to speed. Historically agriculture is the most difficult sector to organiseEin, because of the nature of the industry. Our members have becomeEdemoralised and ill-disciplined due to poor leadership and a serious lackEof resources. “We are slowly trying to build capacity, but it is difficultEbecause we are not a powerful affiliate within the federation.” In KwaZulu-Natal the union has one full- time shop steward, the committed and tireless Bambesani Mngadi, who organises workers at Illovo Sugar. The full version of this article was published in the SA Labour Bulletin of September 2000