Never mind the elephants - what about farmworkers?

Second opinion: SMUTS NGONYAMA

(Sunday Times - 25 July 1999)

A TAXI driver once responded when asked by a traffic officer to produce his driver's licence by stating it was he, not a piece of paper, who drove the vehicle.

Likewise, our Constitution itself is merely letters on a piece of paper. It will remain so unless there is a sincere and united effort by all South Africans to ensure that its provisions are extended to each and every corner of our society.

The drafting of our new Constitution has seen South Africans having praise piled on them from around the world.

Its preamble establishes the basic and noble tenets on which it is based: protection of dignity and democratic values, equality before the law, and so on. Admirable ideals, indeed. It is truly light years away from our past.

But one could easily be forgiven for thinking that this document did not seek to include those labourers and tenants living on farms and black people in general living in the rural areas.

Farmworkers in particular are victims of systematic racial discrimination and violations of human rights - forced to live and work in subhuman conditions, subjected to indiscriminate verbal and physical abuse and torture (sometimes even murder) and continually threatened with unemployment and eviction.

In the past week alone, three cases of racial attacks on and abuse and torture of black rural victims received prominence in the media (although not nearly as much as that dedicated to the Tuli elephant saga):

• The cruel painting of "trespasser" Moses Nkosi by an Mpumalanga farmer;
• The rape of a woman, 33, by her employer on a farm in Alldays, Northern Province; and
• The torture and killing of Jabulani Mabelane in Burgersfort by three men, including a senior policeman. He was electrocuted with a welding machine for allegedly stealing R200.

These examples are merely the tip of the iceberg. The attention given to the "silver paint" incident is clearly out of the ordinary. Most incidents like this and other abuses of farmworkers are hardly ever afforded a mention in the news briefs, let alone make the headlines.

Not only are farmworkers predisposed to physical, mental and verbal abuse, they are also exploited to the extreme in terms of wages earned and hours worked. Demands for acceptable minimum conditions have led to local labourers losing their jobs, contributing to an even higher level of unemployment in rural areas.

Instead, farmers have resorted to using "phantom" labour from Mozambique and Zimbabwe who are prepared to work for as little as R5 a day. Farmers also know that these workers are unlikely to report any abuse or ill-treatment as they are generally in the country illegally.

Justice, too, is treated differently in rural areas - so much for the constitutional provision of "all equal before the law".

On the one hand, farmers (read white) generally receive light sentences. For example:

• In April this year, a six-year suspended sentence was given to a West Rand farmer for shooting and killing a woman for talking too loudly;
• In October 1996, a Northern Province farmer was acquitted of shooting a labourer three times, saying he thought that he was "shooting a dog"; and,
• Who can forget the suspended sentence given to Nicolas Steyn for the killing of sixmonth-old Angelina Zwane?

On the other hand, farmworkers (read black) receive disproportionally harsh sentences, like the R800 fine or two months in jail sentence given to a female farmworker in the Messina area for "stealing" firewood.

The pattern of such sentences has strengthened the perception that farmers are above the law and entitled to abuse farmworkers, should they so wish. It would seem as though human rights and the provisions of the Constitution end at the boundary fence of the farm. Where is it decreed that the lot of farmworkers is perpetual oppression and discrimination by "their landlords and masters"?

But this issue does not begin and end with the farmers alone. It is a serious indictment on the skewed morals of SA society where:

• Judging from public response to this issue (or lack thereof), the welfare of 14 elephants commands far greater importance than the hundreds of farmworkers abused daily on farms around the country; and
• Assessing from prominence given in the media for any killing of a white farmer, the lives of farmworkers (black) are not equitable to the lives of farmers (white).

Society's continued silence on such matters makes us all accomplices to these acts.

How do we ever begin to ensure that the freedom and democracy won five years ago becomes meaningful to all South Africans if we still have such miscarriages of justice that abound in our rural areas?

This will happen only when:

• Farmworkers are informed of their rights;
• Farmers are educated on the limits of their authority;
• The justice system treats all cases equitably, regardless of who and what race the victim or the perpetrator is;
• Dedicated inspectors are tasked with investigating living and working conditions on farms and other workplaces;
• Farmers' unions make visible efforts to condemn and distance themselves from perpetrators of these atrocities; and
• SA society affords the same kind of attention to the plight of farmworkers as it does to other "causes" (including elephants).

Until these things happen, and constitutional and human rights are extended, in real terms, to all South Africans, including farmworkers, we should not be too boastful of our Constitution or our democratic advances as their continued persecution undermines the new nation the Constitution tries to create.

The new way of doing things, as mooted by our President - in the spirit of faranani and collective patriotism - needs to be implemented in the rural areas and on farms, too, if we are to succeed in building a new nation. A nation working together and caring for one another.

Ngonyama is head of the ANC Presidency and its chief spokesman