Towards a rational debate

“We cannot generalise, but can we seriously and honestly say that a loving, caring  sense of solidarity exist amongst all farming communities. With that I mean [between] farmers and workers. The irony is that innocent farmers sometimes pay the price for situations where colleagues persevere with racism and abuse,” Dr Braam Hanekom, moderator of the Dutch Reformed Synod in the Western Cape, said in an interview with Leadership Intelligence Bulletin.

How to positively impacting the climate in rural areas in an attempt to improve harmonious relationships between food producers and workers so as to prevent a breeding ground of worker hostilities against farmers has become a real discussion point lately. In this article, our second of a series, we take a closer look at this aspect of the problem.

Dr Hanekom pointed out that any form of violence should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. “The killings and violence against the farming communities is an atrocity and should stop immediately. I do have my serious doubts [about whether] the government is doing enough to bring an end to the situation.”

To resolve this issue, Dr. Hanekom asks what the farming community can do to prevent the present situation from becoming even a greater abomination among people who have been living in conflict with farmers for many years.To find the answer, it might help to ask whether everyone experiences a crisis as our crisis? Why or why not? Understanding a difference in perspective allows us to see how    an environment would look in which positive values grow.

“I think it poses a challenge to the farming community and the church. After all many of them are our members,” said Dr Hanekom.

Farm murders have featured prominently the past month, as at least three farm attacks took place in the Western Cape in November.

From March 2010 to March 2011, the Transvaal Agricultural Union said the ratio of murders in the farming community were 86 to 100 000 farmers – a higher ratio than policemen killed in the country, which during the same period, was 61 to 100 000 police members.

At the national farm workers summit at the end of July last year, Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, said poverty, pay, job insecurity, foul living and working conditions, disregard of health and safety, summary dismissals and evictions, physical assaults, racist abuse and even rape and murder are widespread on farms.

Farm workers and dwellers have even been shot “in mistake for baboons” and mauled by lions. This is all part of everyday life on South Africa’s farms.

Labour relations on farms is a disgraceful blot on SA society, he claimed.

“It remains unacceptable that the human rights of these workers and dwellers continue to be violated. Not many of these violations and crimes are reported. Of those reported, only a few are successfully prosecuted. Of those prosecuted the guilty verdict is not common. Of those with guilty verdicts, punishment does not fit the crime committed.”

Dr Pieter Mulder, deputy minister of agriculture, has, however, warned against generalisations about poor labour relationships between farmers and workers.

He said generalising the relationships between commercial farmers and that their workers are poor, is  wrong and based upon propaganda or assumptions.

An investigation, which was undertaken by the well-known researcher, the late professor Lawrence Schlemmer, found that the relationships between farmers and their farm workers are overwhelmingly constructive and harmonious.

“[This] is also my personal experience the past two years as deputy minister, where I visit many farms,” Dr. Mulder said.“In the same vein, farm murders are not the result of poor relationships between commercial farmers and their farm workers.The investigation into farm attacks which was publicised in 2003, studied 2600 instances of farm murders. Only 1,6% of these cases were related to labour disputes on farms.

A poor relationship between a factory owner and his workers, or a commercial farmer and his workers, can, in any case, never justify a murder,” said Dr Mulder.

Kobus Visser, director of corporate liaison of AgriSA, said in an interview with us that Agri SA maintains that the relationship between employer and employee on farms are generally of a high quality.

“There is a strong union at play where most of the workers not only work on the farm, but also have accommodation there. The farmer provides additional services to the workers because the municipalities don’t deliver them. He also provides basic services like housing, water, electricity, schooling, transport and health services,” Visser said.

Agri SA says given the continued unsubstantiated allegations of misconduct by farmers as well as the alleged inhumane treatment of farm workers, organised agriculture felt it necessary to reiterate its commitment to certain values and approaches regarding the working conditions of and their relationship with farm workers.

Agri SA and its affiliates have, in the past, complied fully with the provisions of the Constitution, the Sectoral Determination published under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, 1997 (as amended) and any other labour legislation applicable to the agricultural sector, and will continue to do so in future, subject to the extent of the influence which Agri SA exercises over the industry.

No worker or employer or person shall be unfairly discriminated against based on race, age, gender, pregnancy, marital status, family responsibility, disability, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation or religion.

In conclusion

Perhaps Afri-forum, Agri SA, the government, the police, the ministry of agriculture and other agencies engaging in ongoing interactions with farm workers, farm attacks and solutions to these problems, should engage in a new form of debate.

Dr Jan Hofmeyr of the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation, argued in 2011, for example, that the hate speech trial of Julius Malema should never have gone as far.

He says stakeholders in opposing camps, across social and economic policy spectrums are becoming increasingly combative and that for the same reason, the situation is becoming increasingly untenable.

Hofmeyr said South Africans in all spheres should have done more to avert situations like this and where they seem to be driven to the extremes. “Economic injustice, of course, represents our society’s most pronounced fault-line, but the origins and consequences of its deep structural roots cannot possibly be eradicated overnight.

In the absence of quick-fix solutions, we need to find new ways of talking to each other and to invest in existing institutions that hold the potential to expedite more inclusive forms of social transformation,” he says.

If all the stakeholders in the agricultural sector can put the words of Hofmeyr into productive action and find new adventurous ways of addressing the climate in rural areas in a positive way, South Africa might be getting closer to the national indaba on farm murders, and to the solution of the alarming trend of atrocities on farms.

(In our next one of this thee part series of articles, early next year, we will be talking to various role-players about a way forward.)