A local research organisation is concerned that state land-reform in the Cacadu district is leaving farmworkers impoverished rather than improving their livelihoods.
A local research organisation is concerned that state land-reform in the Cacadu district is leaving farmworkers impoverished rather than improving their livelihoods.
In one extreme case, 53 casual workers found themselves jobless when work on their Cacadu farm stopped due to a contractual default between the new owner and the previous one.
The farm, Clifton Towers, in Committees Drift, was bought by the government and leased to a black farmer four years ago. The East Cape Agricultural Research Project (Ecarp), a locally based non-profit organisation, has been doing research on four farms, including Clifton Towers, that were part of a land-reform project in the Cacadu district from October 2008 to October 2010.
Edah Jowah, a programme coordinator at the project, said interviews with farms workers during the two years of research had revealed many problems, including absent owners who lived elsewhere, reduced production levels, and strained labour relations between the new owner and workers.
Known as the Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (or Plas), this programme was launched nation-wide in 2008 by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (formerly Department of Labour). The process was that the government bought a commercial farm and then, through grants, helped potential beneficiaries – be they farm workers or emerging farmers from previously disadvantaged backgrounds – to acquire it.
The four farms that were the subject of the Ecarp research are Clifton Towers and Outspan, both at Committees Drift, Rockhurst, at Carlisle Bridge, and Yarrow, in Sevenfontein. Rockhurst is the most successful among the four farms but Jowah said that overall, the research showed farmworkers' livelihoods had been compromised.
Ecarp found that Rockhurst had been able to function at maximum levels, thanks largely to the fact that the people who took it over had been farm workers under the previous owner. Jowah, referring to the three struggling farms, said that in some cases, the new owners were flouting departmental guidelines regarding workers' rights, including minimum pay and labour laws.
"Some of the farm workers were born on these farms, they grew up in these farms, and they'll probably die there," said Jowah, saying she feared for the farm labourers' livelihoods, as a consequence of Plas.
The research findings, which Ecarp hopes to release to the public some time this month, indicate that although the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform was targeting poor farm communities, farm workers were largely dissatisfied with what had become of their places of employment.
Ecarp found that:
* Of the four Plas farms, only one had beneficiaries who had been farm workers under the previous owner. The other three farms had been leased out to three individuals based in East London. Of these three beneficiaries, only one actually lived on the farm.
* The three struggling farms had experienced a significant decrease in their production levels. This had resulted in forced retrenchments and casualisation of labour. In Outspan, the previous owner farmed both livestock and crops. Under Plas, only livestock was farmed.
* During the interviews, workers and others living on the farms where Plas had been implemented showed a high level of dissatisfaction with the process and its outcomes, and the lack of support they had received from the state to ensure their concerns were addressed.
* Labour relations on the three farms were strained. Labour violations, such as farmers’ not meeting the minimum wag, and other labour law transgressions were common.
* On all the farms, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform had offered very little support to farm workers and dwellers in all the projects with regards to their labour conditions. There has been very little coordination between that department and the Department of Labour, to ensure that workers’ rights, together with the tenure rights of workers and dwellers, were upheld by beneficiaries.
Lungelwa Booi, a farm labourer born on Outspan and who has lived there all her life, confirms some of the research findings. Booi said she and her family were now farming the land there after the government "removed" the last owner, who came to own Outspan under Plas, in October last year.
Agri Eastern Cape president, Ernest Pringle, raised concerns about the beneficiaries' non-compliance with labour laws, what he termed the "selective enforcement" of those laws, and the department's selection of beneficiaries.
"Farms are mainly given to people with political influence, and of the right political persuasion," said Pringle. "Not surprisingly, there has been wholesale failure of these farming enterprises. The whole process comes back to the need for careful selection of beneficiaries for their skills and commitment, and the need to evict those who prove to be failures. "Otherwise, this appalling waste of taxpayers' money will continue unabated."
Jowah said Ecarp intended to use the research to urge the government to revisit land reform, which had been formulated to address poverty and inequalities among farm workers around the country. The government aims to transfer 30% of the country's agricultural land to black ownership by 2014.
According to a report in the Mail & Guardian in May last year, only 5% of land had thus far been transferred to black owners. At the time of going to press, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform had not replied to Grocott's Mail's request for comment.
