4 November 2004
This coming Saturday, 6 November 2004 is our "Red Saturday", our National Day of Action, to demand land for the landless, under the slogan "Mawubuye Umhlaba". The SACP will be marching to the offices of Agri-South Africa, and other farmers' unions representing white commercial agriculture. Our Red October Campaign and our national day of action has been endorsed and supported by the ANC, COSATU and 49 other organisations.
We are calling upon the millions of workers and the landless poor to join us on this day, as we table our demands to white commercial agriculture for accelerated land reform, basic rights and services for farm workers and a national land summit. The national march will be in Pretoria to the offices of Agri-SA. There will be 9 other marches, targeting the local offices farmers' unions and associations, in:
For the Pretoria march, trains will leave from all train stations in Soweto, central Johannesburg, the Vaal area, the West Rand and Greater Pretoria at 8am on Saturday morning. These trains are available free of charge to all marches.
These marches are a culmination of intense work done by SACP structures on the ground, over the last month. Communist Party branches conducted household surveys in targeted rural and farming areas, we held more than 200 tribunals, forums and mass meetings with thousands of farm workers, farm dwellers, rural landless, landless people in urban areas and trade unions. We also held marches and pickets in all the nine provinces. We have protested together with families facing evictions, violent attacks on black farm workers and highlighted the many failures of the justice system in a number of rural areas to act on cases of violence, particularly those against black farm workers.
Thousands of our people have responded enthusiastically to our campaign and it is clear that our campaign has struck a cord. We have worked together with our allies and a wide range of progressive forces including agricultural co-operatives, small and black farmers, NGOs, trade unions as well as the farm workers and landless poor. They have all strongly supported the SACP campaign.
Already just over the last four weeks we have come across many problems facing millions of the rural people, particularly farm workers. Some of these problems include the following:
We believe that the above is just the tip of the iceberg. As the SACP, we say ten years into our democracy these things cannot be allowed to continue!
We wish to share with the media and the people of our country just some of the incidents we have come across during this month of October.
Evictions and cases of abuse
In an area called Nibela, some 30 kilometres outside of Hluhluwe in KwaZulu Natal, in November 2002, a farmworker, by the name of Julius Nsukwini, was shot dead in broad daylight. A farmer commonly known in the area as "Hennie" (we are following details of his actual name and surname) allegedly, shot him. We met with his widow who told us that up till this day no one has been arrested or charged for this murder, despite the fact that the whole community is convinced about who the murderer is.
The same farmer in Nibela is also accused of having shot the only three cattle of another widow in the area, depriving her family of their only means of livelihood. Again, charges have been laid, but no one has been arrested or charged.
In Limpopo, a farmworker, by the name of Champion Sithole, who was working in a farm known as Sekunkwane, in Orighstad near Burgesfort, died on 25 May 2004 after having worked for the farmer for more than 30 years. He is still today lying in a mortuary called Tswelopele, not buried. Mr Sithole was not registered as an employee and he does not have an ID. We however wish to thank Mr Gouws, the owner of the mortuary for his understanding and keeping the body for such a long time. The SACP in Limpopo has called for the dismissal of the local station commissioner, a Mr Viljoen, for having done nothing about this matter despite having been informed months ago.
In another case, 31 families living in the Austern farm, west of Soshanguve in Pretoria, resolved to resist and oppose their pending eviction by the land-owner who has obtained a court order to this effect in violation of the community's right to land and shelter, and without providing them with alternative accommodation. The community had expected the court sheriff to start with the eviction on 1 November.
Meanwhile another 200 families are also facing eviction from Plots 117 and 175 farms in the Kameeldrift area, east of Pretoria, near the Roodeplaat dam. Plot 117 is owned by Charles Burns who has not engaged the community at all in any consultation about their needs and the intended eviction. In July, the community received an unsigned eviction notice from a particular S.J. Momberg purporting to be acting on behalf of Charles Burns. This notice does not have the name of any law firm, no phone number or contact address. According to the notice, the community's last day at the plot was 31 October. Many of the residents have been on the land for more than 10 years, some going back to 1974, and many were recruited by the land-owner him to stay on, and rent the land.
We are now working with these communities to oppose these evictions and to seek legal advice and action using existing laws which protect the rights of tenants to stay on land and their security of tenure. Clearly, the white commercial farmers and land-owners are finding ways to bypass and exploit loops in these laws: there is a constant flow of evictions from commercial farms because economically motivated evictions remain legal. This means that commercial farmers evict workers and dwellers to continue making profits from the farms without any regard to the well-being and security of the workers and dwellers. This leads to homelessness and job losses. In urban areas, we have also come across cases of removals from informal settlements. We are also now paying attention to the consolidation of these laws including the outlawing of evictions and the need for the provision of shelter and basic services. We therefore call for an end to all evictions and forced removals.
We call upon white farmers and land-owners to ensure that these come to an end. We also call on government and human rights institutions and NGOs to intensify their monitoring work and take appropriate action where required.
We invite the media to follow up on some and many of these cases.
Retrenchments and workers' conditions
On 29 October, we joined the 4,000 workers at the Tzaneen-based Sapekoe Tea Estates and their trade union, FAWU, in a march to the employers to highlight workers' opposition to the pending closure of the company and the lack of consultation and participation of workers and their union in this decision. This unilateralism by the management of Sapekoe shows the extent to which commercial agriculture simply ignores the sectoral determination on minimum working conditions for farm workers and general labour legislation which emphasises the need for the consultation of workers in any pending decision to close down a company.
Further, our campaign has underlined the urgency of the need to free farm workers from the poverty, insecurity and even violence that is still the everyday reality for thousands of them. Many farms are no-go-areas for trade unions. This is why we are calling for the Department of Labour to build its capacity to enforce the law in all farms.
Engaging white commercial farmers and landowners
During the course of our campaign, we also held a very successful and symbolic meeting with mainly white commercial farmers and land-owners in the Ugie and Maclear farming districts of the North Eastern Cape. In the engagements, the white commercial farmers and land-owners expressed willingness to sit down, talk and co-operate with landless communities in order to ensure accelerated land reform. These farmers are also grappling with innovative ways to make land accessible to their farm workers and the landless poor. We welcome and are indeed encouraged by these initiatives. This is the kind of commitment, willingness and co-operation required from all stakeholders to solve land inequality in our country.
In contrast to this positive attitude from commercial farmers in the Maclear and Ugie areas, the Eastern Cape Agricultural Union refused to send a representative to receive a memorandum of demands from more than 1,000 SACP-led marchers in Queenstown on 31 October. Unfortunately, this is the dominant attitude of the majority of commercial farmers, land-owners and organised agriculture in this country. And this is the attitude that must come to an end.
Mass mobilisation
Part of our activities during the last month included a National Consultative Conference on the Red October Campaign (held on 15 October) which mobilised and brought together more than 44 progressive organisations which all endorsed the Red October Campaign and each other's campaigns and actions.
The organisations will meet again to prepare for a further national consultative summit (referred to as the People's Consultative Conference) to mobilise the widest range of forces to prepare for the National Summit.
Many progressive forces have waged land struggles but many of these struggles have been too isolated from each other. Our Red October Campaign and the decisions of the National Consultative Conference have laid the basis for the building of a broad and diverse but united movement through concrete struggles. The lack of grassroots landless people's organisations on the ground, as well as lack of trade union organisation of farm workers is one of the biggest challenges in land and agrarian transformation in our country. One of the key outcomes that our campaign has the laid the basis for achieving is the building of people's land committees throughout the length and breadth of our country.
The way forward after 6 November
Our National Day of Action will mark just the beginning of this SACP-led campaign as we intend to intensify it in the months and years ahead until the landless have access to productive land. Our Central Committee this month will receive a full report on the campaign and decide on specific measures to take the campaign forward.
Some other key outcomes we would like to see out of the campaign is the establishment of people's land committees representing farm workers and landless rural poor, as basic units to take forward the land and agrarian struggles throughout the rural and urban localities of our country. We are also working closely with COSATU and FAWU to ensure that the organisation of farm workers into trade unions is intensified. To this end, one of our key demands is for farmers to open their farms so that trade union organisers can have access to workers, and for other human rights organisations to educate farm workers about their rights.
We are confident that our people will come out in their thousands on Saturday in support of our Red Saturday.
CONTACT Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara (surname Jara)
Head of the Office of the General Secretary
South African Communist Party
Tel - 011 339-3621; Fax - 011 339 4244/6880
Cell - 083 651 0271
Email - mazibuko@sacp.org.za and sacpho@wn.apc.org