- About 200 farm workers marched to Parliament on Friday to demand agrarian reform.
- The march was organised by the Women on Farms Project (WFP) and the Rural Women’s Assembly.
- The marchers handed over a memorandum addressed to Minister of Agriculture Thoko Didiza.
- They demanded land redistribution and agrarian reform, a moratorium on farm employee evictions, a ban on hazardous pesticides on farms, and social safety within the type of a primary revenue grant.
- David Esau, provincial Chief Inspector of the Department of Labour, mentioned that many farm accidents weren’t reported and staff have been coerced into signing unlawful contracts.
“We provide this country with food yet we don’t have any food,” a farm employee from the Northern Cape mentioned in entrance of Parliament in Cape Town on Friday.
Laura Boer has been engaged on a farm for practically 4 years. She mentioned that farm workers barely make the minimal wage. They are landless, and they’re continually dealing with evictions from farms.
Boer is one in every of about 200 ladies dwelling on farms within the Western and Northern Cape who marched to Parliament on Friday 28 October and handed over a memorandum of calls for addressed to Thoko Didiza, Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development.
The prolonged memorandum set out calls for for land redistribution and agrarian reform, a moratorium on farm employee evictions, a ban on hazardous pesticides on farms, and social safety within the type of a primary revenue grant.
In the memorandum the workers quoted the Freedom Charter: “It is still the will of farm workers and dwellers that ‘The land shall be shared among those who work it.’”
The march was organised by the Women on Farms Project (WFP) and the Rural Women’s Assembly. The memorandum was obtained by a consultant of the presidency. Some of the placards learn: “Land = dignified lives”, “Prosecute farmers who violate farm worker rights”, and “Courts stop granting eviction orders”.
Colette Solomons, director of WFP, mentioned to GroundUp that because the uprisings on farms in 2012, issues “have not improved in the last ten years” within the lives of farm workers. “In many respects, things are actually deteriorating. Work is more insecure. Evictions are happening at a pace. We can no longer continue being dependent on farmers,” she mentioned.
The protest adopted week-long conferences which introduced collectively audio system from commerce unions, civic organisations, authorities departments, and researchers. Topics ranged from unlawful farm employee evictions, and landlessness to pesticide publicity, and labour rights violations.
About 200 farm workers marched to Parliament on Friday. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks
Zwelivelile Mandela, Chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, delivered the opening tackle. Mandela spoke about preliminary findings from farm visits carried out by the committee with the Department of Labour and Employment within the Western Cape earlier this yr.
Mandela mentioned that the joint committee heard about how farm workers lacked entry to water and electrical energy. They additionally heard about unlawful evictions, violations of labour rights, and unfair dismissals and retrenchments of farm workers who had labored on farms for many years.
He mentioned these points have to be “urgently addressed as it is central to restorative justice in South Africa… Our oversight found some of the worst infringements on the rights of women on farms.”
Esau mentioned that within the Witzenberg, Paarl, and West Coast areas, that 807 out of a complete of two,575 farms have been non-compliant. Common points have been that accidents weren’t reported, staff have been coerced into signing unlawful contracts, and there was a scarcity of entry to ingesting water and ablution services.
A decision coping with varied points was handed on the finish of the conferences and drafted into the memorandum.
© 2022 GroundUp. This article was first revealed here.