Farmworker wins lengthy eviction battle
A LADISMITH worker and his family moved back into their home on the Voorbaat farm yesterday after the Constitutional Court overturned a 2015 eviction order obtained by the owner.
Karel Swart, deputy general secretary of the Commercial Stevedoring Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) said the Concourt had sent a clear message that “farmworkers are human” and that they are “not just an extension of farm machinery and property” to be “dumped at will”.
Swart said Karel Snyders, 54, was fired by Louisa de Jager in 2008.
Eviction proceedings began the same year but the Snyders family was only evicted in 2015, after years of battle in magistrate’s, Land Claims and Appeals courts.
The eviction order was overturned two weeks ago, allowing Snyders and family to return to the home they had lived in since 1992. Since 2015, they have been living in a shed on a neighbouring farm and Snyders has other employment.
Swart said the ruling was “full restoration of farmworker’s humanity”, at a time when at least 1.7 million had been “dumped” countrywide by commercial farmers who were branching out into other business ventures such as B&Bs.
“The upshot of the judgment is that terminating employment does not automatically terminate the right of residence of a farm dweller, in line with Section 19 of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act of 1997. De Jager was instructed to pay costs.”
Swart said the eviction of workers from farms they had lived on for a long time caused “serious hardships” and the “displacement not only affects the breadwinners, but entire communities and families”.
Farmworkers are evicted without “alternative accommodation” or the court being provided with social worker reports on the family circumstances.” – bronwyn. davids@inl.co.za