Many evicted from farms

THE Trollip farm debacle isn’t an isolated incident, but the norm on farms in the metro’s rural areas and the country in general. In the constituency I serve, on behalf of the ANC, as chairperson of Dimitri Tsafendas branch Ward 1, I have been inundated with complaints from farm workers weekly for the past eight years with blatant violations of human rights.

You’ll have farm dwellers working without pay to offset the cost of living in sub-human conditions and cleaning stables for horses that have better accommodation than the dwellings they live in. Evictions from farms are common and if not for the progressive Extension of Security of Tenure Act (Esta) laws passed and championed by the ANC government, we would see a lot more shacks on Victoria Drive.

Ask those shack dwellers where they come from and you’ll find the majority come off farms in the area. This to me is a strategy employed by the white bourgeoisie land owners across the country to put more pressure on an already saturated public housing system.

Go to any rural town in South Africa and you’ll find a mushrooming of shanty towns. Where do these citizens come from?

Off the farms as the farmers implement an inhumane form of ethnic cleansing.

Collecting farm workers for a social development event I was parked outside a farm waiting when the owner arrives and says I’m blocking access to his farm and influencing his workers. He threatens my life – isn’t this a case of shooting the messenger?

All I can say is learn your basic conditions of employment and the Esta laws because while the ANC lives, you won’t get away with human rights violations.

Kevin Foster, chairperson, Dimitri Tsafendas ANC branch and Ward 1 ANC candidate, Port Elizabeth