Certification and social investment awards hide the harms that farmworkers suffer. Photo: File
South Africa’s rural crisis did not begin yesterday. It is the product of a vast, interconnected system designed to protect corporate profits, maintain elite land ownership and keep farmworkers, forestry dwellers and small-scale producers invisible. This system is not broken. It is working exactly as it was built to.
At its core are the agri-businesses and export companies whose logos fill supermarkets and dominate award lists in wine, fruit, forestry and livestock. They speak the language of sustainability, inclusion and social impact. They win awards but their profits rely on cheap labour, insecure tenure and rural communities stripped of political power.
Surrounding them is a web of support. Investors label these companies “ESG-compliant” (environmental, social and corporate governance). NGOs, often funded by corporate social investment budgets, run feel-good projects that avoid deeper change. Certification bodies hand out stamps of approval. Media houses report on export volumes but ignore evictions. Government departments frequently look the other way.
This is the ecosystem of injustice — a carefully coordinated network that sanitises harm and rewards complicity.
As chief executive of the Surplus People Project, I see the toll this system takes. I have walked through plantation villages where sewage flows past crumbling homes with no title deeds. I have sat with farmworkers dismissed without pension or recourse. I have met women who face daily violence, without police protection or labour rights. These are not exceptional stories. They are what happens when power goes unchecked.
The failures are systemic. In multiple cases, women farmworkers have turned to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) after years of unsafe conditions, wage exploitation and intimidation. Reports from the Women on Farms Project, the Commission for Gender Equality and the South African Human Rights Commission document stalled cases and state apparatuses that favour employers while workers wait for justice. Meanwhile these farms continue to collect ESG awards and maintain reputational cover.
This is why the Casual Workers Advice Office, alongside organisations such as Surplus People Project, is calling for amendment of Rule 25 of the CCMA. Under current rules, workers can only be represented by union officials or lawyers. Many are un-unionised and cannot afford legal fees. NGOs and advice offices frequently support cases, yet commissioners often deny them permission to represent workers. The advice office’s proposal would allow any person chosen by the worker to represent them, as long as they were not paid. This change would open a crucial door in a system built to exclude.
Most South Africans will never see these struggles up close. For many in the middle class, rural life is a distant reality. But our pensions fund the same agri-businesses. Our supermarket purchases come from the same farms. Our charity reinforces the same silence.
This system is upheld not only by business but by the state. Land reform stalls. Labour protections go unenforced. Farmworker equity schemes collapse without oversight. Public employment programmes offer temporary relief but no lasting progress. Police remain bystanders as families are evicted. The budget exists. The laws exist. What is missing is the political will required to hold power accountable.
Too many NGOs have also stopped short. Some deliver services that alleviate immediate hardship but refuse to confront the cause. Some actively shield corporate interests while the people they claim to serve are evicted, poisoned by chemicals and denied water and dignity.
We need to name this clearly. We are not dealing with isolated failures. We are confronting a full-scale system of dispossession.
It will not be dismantled through policy tweaks, PR campaigns or corporate awards. It will be dismantled only when we expose its parts and demand change at every level: land, labour, finance, governance and public discourse.
At the Surplus People Project, we are working towards mapping this system, to show how agribusiness, government departments, financiers, media and the public form an ecosystem that extracts wealth from rural communities while pretending to be socially responsible. This is not about blaming one actor. It is about revealing design.
If we want justice, we must understand the machinery of harm. Then we must ask: “Where do we intervene and what levers can shift the system?” That is the real work.
Mandela Day is not enough if it soothes guilt without uprooting injustice. Corporate social investment and ESG are not enough if they certify the exploitative as responsible. We cannot keep painting childcare crèches while workers are evicted from farms they helped build. We cannot fund community gardens while denying communities land, water and secure homes.
The work ahead is systemic. It is uncomfortable and demanding. But it is possible.The same ecosystem that protects injustice can be disrupted. Laws can be enforced. Funds redirected. Communities organised. Public consciousness awakened. This is the work of transformation. It must be done.
Charity soothes the wound. Justice closes it. Don’t just do good. Dismantle what causes harm.
Brian Adams is the chief executive of the Surplus People Project.