Situation of farm workers worsened

The situation of Zimbabwe's women farm workers, always one of the most exploited sectors of the workforce, has been worsened by the current land reform programme, said a study prepared by the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition. The country's female farm workers are mostly casual labourers - only 10 percent are permanently employed in commercial farming. Because they were seen as part of a male-headed household, their rights were often ignored, the study found. They were not given leave or bonuses and earned very low wages, often having to supplement their income through other activities, such as beer brewing and prostitution. Like their male colleagues, they were able to access only small pieces of land for their own use. Women who were the descendents of migrant workers from neighbouring countries battled to get their own identity documents: precious credentials that entitled them and their children to social services. Before the land reform programme began in 2001, up to 350,000 farm workers were employed on commercial farms owned by about 4,500 white farmers. Their dependents numbered around 2 million - more than 20 percent of the national population. By the beginning of 2003, only about 100,000 farm workers were still employed on the farms. According to the pro-democracy coalition, more than half the permanent female workers and about 42 percent of the seasonal female farm workers had lost their jobs. Of the meagre five percent of land allocated to farm workers, women appeared to have received less than 20 percent. The casual labour status of the women meant they were not entitled to the few severance packages available, no longer had access to the schools and clinics provided on the farms, and also found themselves without food. "Most of the women would have lived on the farms as part of a household and when the farmers were evicted, most of the workforce also had to leave," Lloyd Sachikonye, researcher at Zimbabwe's Institute of Development Studies told IRIN on Friday. "Some farm workers are staying, based on agreements with the new owners, but their terms of employment have changed and preference is given to men." To cope, said Sachikonye, some women have engaged in informal activities like selling second hand clothes when they can get them, buying and selling vegetables and joining men in illegal, and dangerous, gold panning. "Others have moved to squatter camps and are leading a precarious kind of existence with no access to education, health facilities and food. It's a big problem," Sachikonye said. There were also more households headed by women who were single, divorcees, separated from their partners, or widowed through HIV/AIDS, he added. "Even the Utete report [the government's audit of the land reform process] does not devote sufficient attention to farm workers, let alone female farm workers. Only NGOs have been interested." The coalition warned that "malnutrition is still increasing among farm workers' children on farms and in informal settlements and, as usual, it is the mothers who have to find ways to cope."