Farmworkers plan protest over evictions

The Namibia Farmworkers Union (NAFWU) plans to highlight the plight of evicted farm labourers by returning them to their homes, NAFWU secretary-general Alfred Angula told IRIN on Thursday. "We want to take all the workers who have been evicted back to the farms they were evicted from," Angula said. Reacting to reports that his organisation intended to invade a number of farms next week, Angula said: "We did not say we would have a land invasion - that has been distorted. We will be taking the farmworkers back to the farms, and will ask the farmers nicely, 'please take them back.'" He explained to IRIN: "The workers are facing real problems. Their tenure rights are not addressed - even after living on a farm for 30 years. They get low pay, no notice, no proper housing and no social grant." NAFWU would meet with the Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) [on Friday], he said, before the workers returned to the farms, in the hope of resolving the matter. Ben Fuller, a researcher at Namibia's Policy Research Institute, said the reports of a land invasion by NAFWU had taken everybody by surprise, and that the government had a "willing buyer, willing seller" policy from which they had not wavered. "It was reinforced by a recent policy speech, and government does not want it [land invasions] to happen - they don't want Namibia to be seen as an unstable place. The Namibian way is to talk about things and there are probably going to be very intense discussions over the next few days." He said Angula's explanation that they were merely taking evicted workers back to their homes made more sense. "That is an issue, and government is trying to push through policies on tenure rights dealing specifically with farm workers. However, this is still in the formative stages." NAU, which represents commercial farmers, told IRIN it was working with the government on ways to help with resettlement programmes, and was also involved with a government commission to investigate layoffs in the agricultural sector. However, NAU said evictions were not widespread and asked NAFWU to provide them with details of evicted workers so that they could investigate the circumstances.