Restoring workers’ dignity
Deputy minister holds dialogue on farm evictions, land reform
DEPUTY Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Mcebisi Skwatsha, in partnership with the Women on Farms Project – an NGO working with women in the commercial agricultural sector – conducted farm eviction visits and held a dialogue at the Simondium Community Hall near Franschhoek.
This dialogue comes at a time when there is widespread confusion and fear about the government’s plans to expropriate land without compensation.
“The dialogue will focus on the farm evictions and how our people are ill treated by the farmers, we need strategies on how to deal with the issue of farmers, sharing of information on how to get our land back from these farmers,” said Skwatsha.
“You are millionaires without a single cent in your pocket.”
He said farm workers in the Drakenstein municipality, who are facing eviction from farms, could be the first test case for land expropriation without compensation in the Western Cape.
“After hearing that a possible 20 000 farm workers in the Drakenstein municipality are facing evictions we decided to do something about it. The constitution allows us to expropriate land without compensation. We will assist you to get land without compensation. The plight of farm workers are that after 24 years of freedom, they still have not experienced freedom. People on farms are being oppressed by some farmers. Farmers became rich off your sweat, but now they evict you from farms you lived on your whole life. If you stayed on that farm for a long time that land belongs to you,” he said.
Pat Marran, the Cape Winelands District municipality councillor was also part of the panel. He said: “today I am on the side of the farm workers.”
He told the community that his mother died a poor woman, as she spent her life as a farm worker.
“What kind of a government is this, that negotiates about stolen land?” he asked.
Simondium community leader Bettie Fortuin, handed a memorandum of demands to Skwatsha, saying that “a farm worker and a person living in the same dwelling as the worker may only be evicted by an order of court, once the court is satisfied that the eviction would be just and equitable”.