South African farmworkers march for public land to be released for housing
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About 150 farmworkers marched to Parliament in Cape Town calling on Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson to release public land for housing and redistribution. Farmworker organisations say evictions are rising and tenure insecurity is worsening living conditions.
About 150 farmworkers marched to Parliament in Cape Town last Thursday, calling on Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson to release public land for housing and for redistribution to farmworkers and farm dwellers.
The march followed a three-day National Farm Worker Platform hosted by the Women on Farms Project, with about 15 farmworker organisations taking part, including the Casual Workers Advice Office, the Rural Women's Assembly, the Commercial Stevedoring Agricultural and Allied Workers Union and the Food and Allied Workers Union. Representatives from the departments of employment and labour and of land reform and rural development attended the platform.
The organisations called for an urgent meeting with Macpherson and for public land to be redistributed to "farmworkers and farm dwellers who have often lived and worked on the land for generations". In their memorandum they said "limited access to land remains a major contributing factor to the inhumane conditions experienced by many families living and working in farming communities".
Women on Farms Project co-director Carmen Louw said the organisation had seen an increase in evictions in the Stellenbosch area, and wants people who work and live on farms to have access to housing and to land to grow food for their families. Engela van Schalkwyk, who lives on a farm in De Doorns, said her mother worked on a farm for nearly 60 years but had to leave the farm and the home she had lived in her whole life when she retired, adding that secure land tenure would make a huge difference and that "we want decent houses". Public works did not send a representative to receive the memorandum by the time of publication.