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Farm Workers Organise or Starve
By Blade Nzimande, SACP General Secretary
The South African
Communist Party (SACP) cannot forget the case of more
than 1000 farm workers who were unfairly dismissed by the ZZ2 farm in
the Limpopo Province for demanding that ZZ2 farm must comply with the
new minimum wages set by law. These workers have now been living in poverty
without any income for more than 6 months whilst the employer has continued
to make profits and enjoying high life: a typical case of sacrificing
the working class for the benefit of the bosses. The Communist Party
will therefore use its Red October Campaign for 2003 to put pressure
on the owners of the ZZ2 farm to ensure that the dismissed workers are
reinstated.
Since this dismissal, the Bertie Van Zyl (Pty) Ltd which owns the ZZ2
farm has displayed arrogance and disregard for worker rights. The employer
has refused to reinstate the dismissed workers, has undermined and has
refused to negotiate with their union, SAAPAWU. All this arrogance despite
the fact that the Department of Labour announced intentions to take legal
action against those farmers that refuse to comply with the sectoral
determination.
Because the case of ZZ2 workers is just one case, the SACP will use
the Red October Campaign to call on and mobilise all farm workers to
come forward and report cases of retrenchments, abuse, racism, beatings
and unfair working and living conditions to the Department of Labour,
trade unions and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).
Slave-labour working conditions
Earlier this year, the SAHRC released a report on Human Rights Violations
in farming communities. This report is an indictment against those seeking
to undermine the sectoral determination for farm workers. The SAHRC report
objectively shows that 9 years into a new South Africa, farm workers
still face slave-labour working and living conditions.
The SAHRC report shows evidence that despite the post-1994 major transformation
of the labour market in favour of workers, farm workers still do not
enjoy rights because of arrogant refusal by employers to comply and lack
of adequate mechanisms to ensure compliance by farmers, domestic employers
and many SMMEs. Most workers in these industries still work under conditions
similar to those under apartheid. Black farm workers in particular still
face rampant racism including racial harassment, beatings and murder.
As a case in point, the majority of workers at ZZ2 farm earn an average
of R351 per month, far below the stipulated minimum of R650 per month
for that area.
Farm workers are the lowest paid in the labour market, with many being
forced to accept slave wages of as little as R100. The tot-system still
applies in many farms across the Western Cape province.
In addition, the SAHRC report also notes the following:
- High rates of casual and seasonal labour mean that there is little
income and job security
- Long working hours with many workers working
for 12 hours a day
- High cases of Blatant physical abuse and assaults of farm workers
by farmers
- In cases of abuse, farm workers receive little assistance
from courts
and police, who often collude with farmers and vigilante groups
to suppress evidence and investigations
- Child labour is a common practice in
many farms especially in the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces
- Farmers
still illegally evict farm workers and labour tenants often with the
assistance of the police and magistrates
- Farmers actively prevent
the unionisation of farm workers by denying union organisers access
to farms and victimise workers who decided
to join trade unions
Given the combined and cruel legacy of apartheid and colonialism, the
exploited farm workers are essentially black and the exploitative farmers
are essentially white. More than 60% of the African population in South
Africa is to be found in the countryside which includes largely white-owned
medium and large farms, employing mainly African and Coloured workers
who, as the SAHRC report shows, are still subjected to some of the most
ruthless and primitive forms of labour-tenancy. In fact, that South Africas
workers have achieved a basic floor of workers rights and that South
Africa is based on a constitutional framework promoting human rights
since 1994 is only a news story and pipe-dream to many farm-workers.
The dependence of farm workers on farmers for employment, accommodation,
transport and other basic services makes it difficult for farm dwellers
to challenge abuses and unfair working and living conditions. The extreme
power imbalance between farmers and farm workers is an expression of
the over-bearing influence that white agricultural capital has on land
and agrarian reform.
The current land ownership dispensation itself needs to be an essential
focus of debate and transformation. In our view, land and agrarian reform
must be accelerated whilst also attention is paid to the transformation
of white agricultural capital (a major beneficiary of apartheid). In
practice, the current land reform process is yet to address the central
concerns of poor people living on farms and land owned by others.
If these fundamental issues are not addressed, white agricultural capital
will be further emboldened to undermine workers' rights and continue
with the perpetuation of apartheid land ownership and use patterns.
What are the rights of farm workers in terms of the law?
It is important that more and more farm workers are made aware of, and
empowered to claim their rights in terms of the law. Not only farm workers
must be made aware of these laws: journalists, lawyers, trade unions,
advice offices, government officials, and so on need to know what laws
are in place to promote the rights of farm workers.
Briefly, the government has passed the following laws and regulations
which promote the rights of farm workers:
- The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA)
- Sectoral Determination
for Farm Workers
- Extension of the Security of Tenure Act
In summary these laws provide farm workers with the following rights:
- Unlike in the past, farm workers are now defined as employees
with rights
- Farm workers should not work more than a normal 45-hour
week plus not more than 10 hours paid overtime.
- Sunday pay is double
pay; other overtime is time plus one half.
- Farm workers must have
written contracts.
- Farm workers are entitled to have one day's paid
sick leave for every 26 days worked, one day's holiday pay for every
17 days worked; three
days family leave per year; and four months paid maternity leave.
- The law also states that farm workers who are over 60 years old
and have worked on the farm more than ten years may not be evicted
from the land.
- Farm workers are allowed to stay in their places of
accommodation for a month after they have been retrenched.
- Minimum
annual increases in the wages of farm workers must be higher than inflation
- Minimum standards for accommodation have been established.
- No farmer
may be exempted from the laws promoting rights of farm workers
Despite these progressive laws problems persist: retrenchment of farm
workers continue, human rights violations continue, workers rights are
violated, police and magistrates in small towns collude with farmers,
the Department of Labour does not have sufficient capacity to enforce
laws, SAAPAWU is not sufficiently strong to mobilise and educate workers.
The Communist Party has to ask: what is the point of progressive labour
market policies if we cannot enforce them, if employers can just unilaterally
continue as if it is business as usual? In effect, the violations of
these progressive labour policies are testing the capacity of our democracy
and the working class to defend and advance the interests of the most
marginalised workers in our country.
It is for these reasons that decisive action is required from farm workers,
the trade union, government and other role players.
Decisive Action is required
Firstly, through the Red October Campaign the Communist Party will mobilise
farm workers around their rights as workers, the need for them to join
trade unions and to come forward and report their cases of human rights
violations and exploitation. Our structures on the ground will conduct
visits to farms, hold meetings with workers, report and process cases
of workers and meet with farmers. We will hold meetings with the dismissed
ZZ2 employees and assisting them with the finalisation of their case.
Secondly, the Communist Party will use the Red October Campaign to reiterate
and mobilise support for its call for a halt to farm retrenchments as
a result of the refusal by employers to based on the sectoral determination
on minimum wages for farm workers.
Thirdly, the Department of Labour has to invest substantial resources
to ensure the effective enforcement and compliance of the relevant laws.
We will be meeting with the Department and the trade unions in this regard.
The SAHRC report must be taken forward though legal and other action
against perpetrators of human rights violations. This requires that the
police, magistrates and other relevant institutions are mobilised and
ready to lead in this regard.
The Communist Party believes that all the above require an increased
focus by government and other stakeholders on the building of the capacity
of the state, farm workers and rural communities in order accelerate
land and agrarian reform and roll back the overbearing power of white
agricultural capital on land and agrarian reform.
Therefore the Communist Party is also throwing its weight behind struggles
for access to land, and for state support for commercial use of land
by communities and farm workers. The countryside is definitely a fertile
ground for building a strong co-operative movement around, initially,
small-scale subsistence farming.
Linked to this is the need for stronger state commitment to increased
delivery of social services (social security grants, education and health
services) to farm dwellers as this will go a long way to immediately
improve conditions of farm workers. It is for this reason that the Communist
Party will also tie the mobilisation of farm workers to taking forward
the campaigns to mobilise people without Identity Documents to apply
for IDs, helping farming communities in accessing social security grants
and with voter registration. Without an ID, people cannot access social
service and social security grants.
All of the above must be harnessed towards deliberately seeking to build
motive forces for rural transformation. As things stand, there is no
consciously mobilised mass motive force with economic or political muscle
capable of leading on the land and agrarian question. This is not an
objective that will be achieved in the short-term, but it requires systematic
attention.
Finally, the Communist Party calls all communists, our allies, other
progressive organisations and other South Africans to action and to join
the struggle of farm workers for a better life.
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