Farm workers tenure rights still under threat

The number of mainly black workers evicted from farms has increased since South Africa's democratic era began in 1994, primarily due to perceptions of political and economic risk, says a new study.

According to the National Evictions Survey, conducted by the Nkuzi Development Association and Social Surveys, just under 1.7 million people were evicted from farms in the period between 1994 and the end of 2004, compared to 942,000 in the previous decade.

Researcher Marc Wegerif told IRIN that in terms of the manner in which people were booted off the land, "nothing has changed since the end of the apartheid era". Only 1 percent of those evicted from farms were involved in a legal process challenging their evictions.

"South Africa is trying to implement a land reform programme [with a focus on land redistribution, restitution and security of tenure] ... yet 15 percent of adults evicted from farms had been born on them, while over 50 percent had been on the farm for over 10 years," Wegerif noted.

Those dispossessed - mainly black and mixed-race labourers - were not transient workers. "Many of those uprooted by evictions are families with long histories on the land," the report said, the very people who should benefit from land reform.

The survey indicated that the rate of evictions rose in periods of perceived "political uncertainty", such as when South Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994.

Economic risks, including drought during 1982-84 and again in 1992, and the introduction of new labour legislation in 2003 that increased the minimum wage for farm workers, also resulted in increased evictions.

In the post-apartheid period, the average monthly income of a full-time male farmworker is just R529 (US $81), well below the minimum wage of $100-$124, although higher than the apartheid average of R93 ($14).

Of the evictees, "women and children are the most vulnerable, as they are treated by landowners and the courts as secondary occupiers allowed on a farm only due to their link with a male household member", the study found.

Some 46,748 evicted children were also "involved in child labour when still living on farms", but the report noted that "this number [of child labourers] did drop after 1994". The largest number of child evictions from farms - 71 percent - occurred during the apartheid era.

The report noted that evictees "are vulnerable members of our society, typically having low levels of education and low incomes, even when working". They were often unaware of their rights and even less aware of where to seek assistance.

IMPACT OF EVICTIONS

As a result, the impact of eviction was often "devastating".

"Families who lose their homes; people who had livestock on farms they were evicted from, and those who were growing maize and so on, lose their assets - it seems like we are forcefully removing black farmers from the land, as a significant percentage [of evictees] had their own agricultural assets, such as livestock," Wegerif commented.

He added that "clearly, not every black person wants or needs to be a farmer, but these are people who are farming in their own right, as well as working for [farm owners] and they are being forced out of it".

According to the survey, 44 percent of households had livestock prior to being evicted, with just 9.3 percent able to retain their livestock after being evicted.

Wegerif added that "49 percent of those evicted from farms have been children, which is of great concern when you look at the rights of the child and the general vulnerability of children".

Farm evictions have also contributed to rapid urbanisation: 67 percent of evictees have migrated to urban centres, mostly to towns and cities in the central Gauteng province or the east-coast province of KwaZulu-Natal.

"Since 1994 almost 1 million black people have been forced off 'white' farms," the report said. The trend has consolidated apartheid-era geography, in which the separation of race groups was a key element.

Forty-eight percent of evictees were living in townships constructed to house black people during apartheid, 30 percent were living in informal settlements, and 14 percent in under-privileged former black 'homelands' created by the apartheid state.

"There is currently no provision or planning for the proper accommodation of people from farms; there are almost no planned settlements for farm-dwellers in farming areas," the report stressed.

The study concluded that "evictions have undermined the limited gains of land reforms, and contributed to consolidating ownership of farmland into fewer hands".

South Africa did not have an effective programme to limit the scale of evictions, or to ensure viable settlements for those displaced from farms.

"Urgent policy and programme steps are needed to reverse the trend and establish new relations in commercial farming areas," the report recommended.