Illegal farm evictions took centre stage at the South African Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) hearings this week in Johannesburg on labour conditions on the country’s farms. Yet some participants expressed immediate scepticism about whether the hearings would lead to any meaningful improvements for farm workers.
The hearings were held in a context of heightened tensions between farmers and their workers after Deputy Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Dirk du Toit warned last week that farmers who evict tenant workers illegally could have their land expropriated.
The Freedom Front Plus immediately laid a charge of hate speech against Du Toit, and AgriSA, in its submission to the HRC, criticised the statement as ‘irresponsibleâ€.
This week’s hearings also focused on unfair labour practices and safety on farms. The HRC last held hearings on conditions on farms in 2002. Its report then highlighted abuses that included murders of farm workers and focused on the perennial problem of evictions of farm dwellers. The HRC’s report at the time criticised the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (Esta) and the Land Reform Labour Tenants Act (LTA).
The legislation aimed to secure the rights of farm dwellers, prevent evictions and provide long-term settlement options, but it had failed to achieve this, the HRC concluded.
From 2002 to 2006 nearly 8 800 people have been evicted from farms, Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana told Parliament earlier this year. In a written reply to a question from the Freedom Front Plus’s Pieter Groenewald, she said that 4 674 of these evictions were illegal.
What the main players said
Government
Mduduzi Shabane, Deputy Director General of land and tenure reform, admitted that the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (Esta) and the Land Reform Labour Tenants Act (LTA) were not working because of difficulties with implementation.
‘But the department of land affairs is not a law-enforcement agency,†he said. ‘The police and justice system also have to do their share in stopping illegal evictions.â€
One problem was that the pool of legal experts who could help evictees in court cases was very small, Shabane said. In addition, land-focused civil society organisations, which had once been the ‘eyes and ears†of farm workers, had become weaker, he contended.
He discussed a number of ‘stop gaps†that the department will introduce in the next few months, including a bigger budget and the constant monitoring of farm evictions, especially in hotspots such as KwaZulu-Natal, which had the highest eviction rate. Shabane also explained that there could be no moratorium on evictions — which was proposed after the 2005 land summit — because legal opinion the department had obtained had said such a move would be unconstitutional.
Civil society
Civil society organisations such as Nkuzi Development Association and the Rural Legal Trust provided anecdotal as well as statistical evidence of abuses on South African farms, yet also expressed doubt about whether the hearings would achieve anything.
Teresa Yates of the Nkuzi Development Association said civil society did not anticipate that much would change after the hearings. ‘We have not heard much new here,†she said.
Civil society has been raising concerns about Esta and the other forms of tenure rights legislation and for 10 years nothing has happened, she said.
The farmers’ view AgriSA disputed the government’s statistics on evictions. The union’s president, Lourie Bosman, said commercial farmers were frustrated by unsubstantiated allegations made against them.