Cape Town - Ten years after the headline making De Doorns farm workers' protest for basic services and human rights, not much has changed.
The annual National Farmworkers Platform by Women on Farms Project (WFP) was held with 60 farm workers from across the country with around 16 organisations coming together to assess the plight of farm workers in South Africa, and decide on an approach to address their challenges.
The programme commenced on Monday at the Protea Hotel, Technopark, Stellenbosch, and will continue until Friday.
National Farmworkers Platform coordinator, Kara Mackay said: “This year's theme is Radical Agrarian Transformation and we went for that theme because the pace of transformation in this country is just too slow, and the inequality is increasing and it's unacceptable and untenable.”
Mackay said, in many ways, the lives of farm workers had worsened as they now had to pay for rent, water and electricity on farms.
Farm worker evictions were also spotlighted. Mackay said police did not understand the laws around the eviction of farm workers, particularly the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997.
“There is space in that document and in that law, when farmers are conducting illegal or constructive evictions, in other words making it impossible to live on the farm, those farmers can be prosecuted. They can be arrested because the act on constructive evictions is illegal.
“Yet at the same time, farm workers continue to get evicted without alternative accommodation in the absence of any court order or farmers continue to cut off water, making it unbearable (for workers) to stay on the farm.”
WFP has called for a moratorium on farm worker evictions.
Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela gave the keynote address on Monday. Oversight visits in July, found some of the worst infringements on the rights of women on farms, Mandela said.
At one farm, a woman has not had water and electricity for the past 29 years. On the same farm, another farmworker, who had resided there since 1975 was evicted from her house, after she fell ill and could no longer work.
On a farm in Welverdiend, the new farm owner reportedly beats farm workers, and extracts rent from each person from the household, even children. There were also reports of collusion between farmers and police who accepted bribes to illegally evict families.