Nine families on a farm near Saron in the Tulbagh area were spared from eviction on Monday for a few more days after the Black Association of the Wine and Spirit Industry (Bawsi) secured a court date to try to postpone the eviction order.
Bawsi representative Nosey Pieterse said the eviction order was a result of a dispute over the ownership of Ertjiesfontein farm. Pieterse said that about five years ago the previous sole owner of the farm had together with 20 workers applied for grants from the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) programme.
The farmer used the money to set up a trust through which they purchased the farm together. However, about two years ago the farmer sold the farm behind the workers’ backs and did not notify them, said Pieterse.
The lawyer for the farmworkers, David Sauls, said the new owner of the farm, Boet Immelman, was granted an order on April 3 to have the workers evicted. The order said that if the workers had not left by April 20, they would be removed by the sheriff on April 23.
However, Pieterse said this had not happened because ”the farmworkers are the owners” and were disputing Immelman’s claim to the land.
Urgent application
Sauls said Immelman then lodged an urgent application for the eviction to be carried out because he said his life was being threatened and he could not do his business. This order was granted on April 24 and the eviction is apparently now scheduled for Thursday.
The eviction would leave close to a hundred people, the bulk of them children as well as a number of elderly people, without shelter, said Pieterse.
Because the order was granted on an urgent basis, reports by a social worker on the welfare of the children, or stipulating where alternative accommodation would be provided, did not have to be issued, Sauls said.
Sauls said he would be in court on Wednesday to apply to have the eviction postponed for a month. This would give time to wait for a land claims court ruling about the fairness of the eviction order and look into how alternative accommodation could be secured in the interim.
‘Tense’ situation
Bawsi representative Pieterse said the situation remained ”volatile and tense” on the farm on Monday.
Immelman said on Monday he would only be speaking to the media through his lawyer.
The ward councillor for the area, Dan Kotze, said the Drakenstein municipality was trying to organise alternative accommodation for the families at a holiday resort. Land was available there to put up tents, but the municipality was still awaiting a report on the feasibility of this, Kotze said.
A spokesperson for the Cape Winelands district municipality, al-Ameen Kafaar, noted that the looming eviction was very close to Workers’ Day, which is celebrated on Tuesday.
”The application for eviction is an indication of what little rights labourers on some farms in our district enjoy compared to the tremendous strides made by workers in other sectors in 13 years of democracy,” said Kafaar. — Sapa