The mines and the farms are two enduring symbols of old
white colonial theft, of the minerals and land. Because of the monopoly of the
National Union of Mineworkers, whose leaders and officials have long preferred
compromise and co-determination over worker control, it has been difficult for
mineworkers to strike – until the Marikana massacre.
It has possibly been even harder for farm workers to strike.
Human Rights Watch estimated recently that less than 3% of
South African farm workers are organized. Most farm workers earn the minimum
wage or well below, with many in the Western Cape still paid partly in alcohol
even though white farmers claim that the ‘dop system’ was done away with years
ago. Striking farm workers often face losing their homes on farms, where they
have buried family members and where their children go to school.
Yet this week, farm workers went on strike in their
thousands in rural towns in the province, with the added promise by Groot
Constantia workers in the city of Cape Town of an imminent strike there.
Yesterday, COSATU and acting Labour minister Angie Motshekga
declared the strike suspended for two weeks. This is not the case. Much like
Marikana, COSATU and the ANC have no influence over this strike, which the farm
workers have vowed to continue.
When the farm workers strike began in De Doorns last week,
it took the ANC, DA and Cosatu by surprise. The farm workers in this small town
140 kilometres east of Cape Town blocked the N1 highway, set fire to the
vineyards, and demanded a wage of R12 500 per month. This was a clear reference
to the Marikana workers’ demand for the same monthly wage, which has since
spread throughout the mines.
The Zimbabwean refugee rights group, PASSOP, rushed to the
scene because the De Doorns farm workers had also allegedly looted Somali-owned
spaza shops in the town. PASSOP officials who lived in the town for a year
after the 2009 xenophobic attacks there, pointed out that the strike appeared
to be spontaneous and not organized by any union.
In the Western Cape, farm workers tend to belong to
non-COSATU unions, namely Sikhula Sonke – a women led farm workers union, and
the independent and more leftist Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and
Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU).
The press is now reporting the Black Association of the Wine
and Spirit Industry (BAWSI) as saying farm workers have suspended their strike.
BAWSI is not a farm workers union, but a pro-ANC lobbying association with
workers and businesspeople in it ranks, which aims to increase the levels of
Black ownership in the wine and spirit industry. BAWSI has no authority to
speak for 15 000 farm workers in the region.
The COSATU farm workers union, the South African
Agricultural, Plantation and Allied Worker's Union, collapsed more than ten
years ago. The Food and Allied Workers Union, another COSATU affiliate, was
then designated to organize the farm workers but never did.
However, the De Doorns strike presented an ideal opportunity
for COSATU to strike a blow against the DA, and COSATU quickly positioned
itself as the voice of the strike, downgrading the farm workers demands to a
modest R150 a day, or just R3300 per month.
COSATU claimed credit when workers on other farms as far as
70 kilometres away quickly took up the call for a R150 minimum wage. And after
a general meeting in Franschoek, hundreds of workers affiliated to Sikhula
Sonke downed tools on 13 November in solidarity with the De Doorns strikers,
spreading the strike further.
However, these solidarity strikes were not of Cosatu’s
making. By November 13, thousands of farm workers in Prince Alfred Hamlet in Ceres,
in Wolseley and in Robertson had set up burning barricades, were setting fire
to farm equipment and were being attacked by police. The workers were also
calling for an end to labour broking on farms.
COSATU and ANC leaders had by then changed tactics and
insisted that farm workers suspend their strike for two weeks while the
government gazettes the new minimum of R80 per day on offer from the white
farmers association.
The Cape Town-based Workers International Vanguard League
has had activists on the ground in the area for the past week and reported that
after the farm workers refused and vowed to continue the strike, police and
militias made up of farmers then invaded De Doorns on the night of 14th
November, opening fire on workers.
According to the activists, farm workers have agreed to be
paid R150 per day and say they will strike until president Jacob Zuma gazettes
this amount.
COSATU and the ANC have clearly not learnt any lessons from
the mineworkers’ strike where their bid to crush workers who attempt to
self-organise and take militant action, has been a flop.
In the farm workers strike, the DA at first openly sided
with the farmers after arrogantly assuming that the disorganized farm workers’
strike would not last more than a few days. Once the strike spread, as the mine
workers’ strike did, Helen Zille blamed COSATU for inciting violence, declared
that only president Jacob Zuma could end the farm workers strike by increasing
the minimum wage on the farms and repeatedly implored Zuma via Twitter to send
in the army to crush the strike.
There is no reason why the white Western Cape farmers could
not raise the wages of farm workers immediately - if they wanted to. In fact,
Zille has known for a long time that the white farmers in the province are
reluctant to pay even the existing minimum wage of R1500 per month. She is also
aware of other abuses against farm workers – they are regularly transported
like cattle on the backs of open trucks, and die in well-publicised accidents.
The DA, COSATU and ANC are all aware that Sikhula Sonke
camped outside parliament three years ago in protest against a white farmer who
forced workers to live in pigsties, and that CSAAWU is campaigning publicly
against farmer Willie Dreyer from Leeuwenkuil farm in Agter-Paarl.
Dreyer allegedly evicted farm worker Patrick Philander, his
wife and four children and laid false charges of attempted murder against him
and another CSAAWU activist, Amos White, after they recruited other farm
workers into the union.
And the internationally-publicised Human Rights Watch report
into South Africa’s fruit and wine industries last year found farms to be “ripe
with abuse” – with farm workers having their water and electricity
disconnected, being harassed in the middle of the night by farmers’ guards and
their dogs, being exposed to pesticides and being prevented from joining
unions.
The ANC has previously fostered disunity between workers in
De Doorns instead of trying to improve the workers’ lot. Three years ago, ANC
ward councillor Mpumelelo “Poyi” Lubisi was named in affidavits supplied to the
Legal Resources Centre as being a mastermind behind a xenophobic attack, which
displaced 3000 Zimbabwean farm workers.
At that time, PASSOP spokesperson Braam Hanekom described De
Doorns then as a “cut-throat environment that is a recipe for tension” with
farmers hiring workers through “a thousand labour brokers” who took the lump
sums and paid farm workers whatever lesser amount they were desperate enough to
accept on any given day.
The farm workers can expect no help from the party, which
rules the province – the DA, because the DA supports labour broking and white
farm ownership monopolies specifically and the free market in general. The ANC
and COSATU are only using the workers to score temporary political points
against the DA and now seem as eager to end the strike, as they were to end the
Marikana miners strike. As in Marikana, De Doorns represents the worst of South
African party politics. Like the mineworkers, South Africa’s farm workers have
long lived in slavery-like conditions and deserve the support of all to
continue their strike and keep blocking the highways.
