SACP in Kwazulu Natal condemns inhumane and brutal eviction of farmworkers by Tongaat Sugar Barons
19 November 2003
The South African Communist Party (SACP) in KwaZulu Natal is fiercely angered by the reported action of the giant sugar company, Tongaat Huletts to retrench and evict farmworkers from their lifelong residences to give way to black entrepreneurs. This is a typical onslaught waged against the workers, worst the most vulnerable, the farmworkers.
Tongaat-Huletts Sugar is known for its leadership role in KZN on privatising land, turn it into apartheid concentration camps, then perfect the race and class exploitation for capital accumulation. The company had also excelled over years as a union basher and breeding ground of sweetheart unions in its innovations to deny workers to exercise their rights to organise.
The retrenchment and forceful eviction of the farmworkers in Tongaat-Huletts, who had sacrifices all their lives of hard labour, is seen by the SACP as crime against humanity and gross undermining of the country's labour laws. The lives and the fate of the workers need not to be sacrificed and further ruined for the benefit of the black entrepreneurs and so called patriotic bourgeoisie. Is this what our hard earned democracy being turn out to be?
The action of this sugar baron flies in the face of the new sectoral determination on farmworkers which ensures the rights of the farmworkers to be treated humanly and in a dignified manner. This is a fatal blow to the ANC lead government's efforts to transform the lives of its people, the majority being the working class. The SACP agrees with the Tongaat Civic Association Chairperson that Tongaat - Huletts retrenchment and eviction of its farmworkers "flew in the face of Black empowerment." While as the SACP do support the economic empowerment of Blacks and land redistribution, equally, we are also strongly opposed to methods that translates into job loss bloodbath, at the direct expense of the black workers and the poor of our country. Our fears and concerns, as the SACP,are that the current developments in this sphere are being daily confirmed, the Tongaat -Huletts case being the recent confirmation that BEE will simply become an add-on, rather than a fundamental component of transformation itself.
Not long ago the SACP raised its concerns on the dependence of the farmworkers on the farmers for employment, accommodation, transport and other basic services which makes it difficult for farmworkers to challenge abuses and unfair working and living conditions. The SACP has called for the current land ownership dispensation to be an essential focus of the debate and transformation. Such debate and transformation must address the central concerns of the poor people living in farms and land owned by others, like the Tongaat - Huletts farmworkers.
Lack of decisive action against the action of Tongaat - Huletts, and any other similar moves, will further emboldened the white agricultural capital to undermine workers right and continue with the perpetuation of apartheid land ownership patterns.
The SACP reiterates its call, in the light of the above, for an increased focus by the government and other stakeholders on the building of the capacity of the state, farmworkers and rural communities in order to accelerate land and agrarian reform and roll back the overbearing power of white agricultural capital on land and agrarian reform.
For more information contact: Themba Mthembu
SACP KwaZulu Natal
Provincial Secretary
083 303 6988
