JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Wednesday
MPUMALANGA is sitting on a race war time bomb where farm labourers still live like slaves, are denied basic health care and are treated worse than mechanical implements such as tractors, the leading political parties in the province have warned.
The situation is so bad in some areas that racial war is likely unless there is urgent and meaningful government intervention, the African National Congress (ANC) and United Democratic Movement (UDM) told the provincial legislature.
But Freedom Front (FF) leader Hein Mentz rejected the warning – and a damning report by a special multi-party ad-hoc committee – and accused the ruling ANC of rigging its probe to smear white and mainly Afrikaans farmers ahead of local government elections later this year.
Accusing the ANC of hate-speech, Mentz said the task team visited only handpicked farms where there were labour relation problems and ignored the thousands of farms were farmers were good employers despite rampant violent crime.
All three other parties in legislature condemned an alleged small group of racist farmers who continue to systematically exploit desperately poor.
“What we discovered was disgusting. Farm workers’ houses are fenced in like zoos with no space for gardens or children to play. Social needs are ignored and workers are instead treated like farm implements – but worse than tractors,” said ANC member Phumzile Ngwenya.
Labourers also commonly suffer from diseases such as asthma and tuberculosis caused by the hazardous chemicals they are forced to use, Ngwenya said.
Rural pensioners, women, children and the disabled are also largely unaware that they qualify for social grants or pensions and instead live in unnecessary squalor.
Sports and recreation MEC Siphosizwe Masango added that labourers appeared on average to earn only R18 each per day in return for backbreaking physical work from dawn to dusk, seven days per week.
Other ANC committee members pointed out that farmers prohibited workers from joining labour unions, were banned from burying family members on land they had lived on for generations, and were subjected to repeated and systematic physical abuse including beatings, torture and illegal eviction.
“The situation out there makes the Ku Klux Klan attacks on African Americans seem like a picnic,” said ANC chief whip Lassy Chiwayo, stressing that 90% of Mpumalanga farmers co-operated with government and attempted to treat their labourers well. – African Eye News Service