In its short existence, the MK party has not been shy about courting controversy. It represents, in essence, a resentful, exclusionary brand of politics whose aim is to tear down the constitutional order – something its leader tried to do during his tenure in office and at which he very nearly succeeded.
A parliamentary presence has merely provided another platform for pursuing this agenda, against whatever targets might present themselves.
Case in point: Dr John Hlophe, the impeached former Chief Justice of the Western Cape, has identified white farmers as a problem for the country. “We have,” he averred, “endless beatings of fellow African people on these farms. Some are killed and buried in shallow graves.”
In response, he proposes confiscating their properties. “Why was it not the same for property, such as property and farmland owned by farmers who kill and torture? Section 300 of the Criminal Procedure Act provides that any property which is the proceeds of a crime will be forfeited.”
No farmer, he said, had suffered the loss of his property for such crimes. “This falls squarely within the constitution. It will be confiscated for the interest of the public. There’s no need for compensation if land or property is seized for public interest.”
There is actually not a great deal of originality in these suggestions, rather they build on a number of populist tropes that have been doing the rounds for decades. Farmers abuse and kill their workers with awful abandon and impunity. Beneath this, is the idea that they hold their property illegitimately. They represent an alien incursion into South Africa – onto “the land” – and hold it through force. Colonial dispossession of the indigenous population is reenacted through each act of violence against farmworkers.
Symbolic act
From this angle, the dispossession of (white) farmers represents an actual and symbolic act of liberation.
But the premise is flawed. There is simply no evidence of the “endless” violence meted out against “fellow Africans” (by “alien” farmers). Yes, instances of abuse take place, sometimes violent and at times lethal. There is, however, no indication that these are anything other than exceptional.
Often, those fingered as “farmers” in media coverage are not farmers at all. Earlier this year, in the vicinity of Groblersdal, two “farmers”, Piet Groenewald and Stephan Greef, were charged with assaulting one of their “workers”. Fill the blanks in with the standard narrative. Yet the men in question were not farmers, but operated a security firm, the alleged victim being one of their employees. He had been guarding a network installation.
The word “farmer” has been used as a political signifier for generations, so to use it conjoins those working in agriculture and on “the land” – a phrase with all its own signifiers – with a rural (abusive) white person. Or white person in general, since “farmer” has been known to take in those living on smallholdings and even suburbanites in order to create the appropriate impression.
It’s from much the impulse that discussions around violence against farmers are often steered towards accusations of poor labour relations. Farmers, in this account, have mistreated their workers and so…. Not quite approval, though a case of what-do-you-expect. Former police minister Bheki Cele tried this in 2020, and I challenged him on it.
Yet here again, violence against farmers and farm dwellers is a complex and poorly understood phenomenon. What we do know from the information available – admittedly very old, though until new studies are done, this is what we have – less than 2% of cases were tied to labour disputes.
Indeed, it’s revealing that even studies harshly critical of the South African agricultural economy – such as Human Rights Watch’s Ripe for Abuse and Corruption Watch’s Land, Corruption and Discrimination – have relatively little to say about violence towards farmworkers. (Reading Ripe for Abuse, I get the sense that domestic violence linked to alcohol consumption is a much bigger problem than assault by farmers.) The preponderance of their concerns relate to wages, working conditions, tenure security and so on.
And that being said, a 2015 report by the International Labour Organisation concluded that, warts and all, across the farms it had studied “compliance with key labour and health and safety rights is generally high across case studies for permanent as well as seasonal workers”. It also found that this was better on larger farms, typically owned by white people, than on smaller units, disproportionately owned by black people. The point of noting this is not to essentialise the racial dynamics – one can leave that to MK and its fellow travellers – but to point out the complexity of the issue. The conduct of farmers towards those working for them has less to do with racial solidarity than with the capacity of the farms in question to comply with legislative demands, and to offer competitive conditions of employment.
In this, farms and farmers are no different from any other commercial sector, or indeed, any other field of societal activity. That there are abusive farmers should come as no surprise. There are, for example, abusive police and security personnel, including those working in the security details of a member of the country’s executive, as an ongoing court case attests. There are numerous ministers of religion who have violated congregants. There are trade unionists willing to employ lethal force to ensure the success of industrial action. This should not imply that every – or even a majority of – police officers, pastors or mineworkers are psychotic.
One might add that there are senior judicial officers whose conduct has been deemed by the Judicial Service Commission to render them unfit for office. This should not be used to cast aspersions on the integrity of all judges.
No causal link
Which, of course, brings us to the question of Dr Hlophe’s remedies. It’s hard to see how this could be taken seriously. Yes, if a piece of property represents the proceeds of crime, it might well be forfeit. But in instances where a crime is committed on a property, or where the owner of a property commits a crime, that relationship simply doesn’t exist. There is no causal link between the crime and the acquisition of the property; nor is the fact of ownership directly relevant to the nature of the offence. After all, there are probably thousands of people who have been found guilty of very serious offences – but this has had no bearing on their ownership of their houses, cars, lounge suites and the rest.
I suspect that what Dr Hlophe is suggesting is not legal in nature, but deeply and foundationally political. It’s about repurposing the law to pursue a political agenda – very much in line with what MK pledges in its manifesto.
For what it’s worth, Dr Hlophe’s remarks are an example of narrative and misdirection: claims without foundation and solutions without plausibility. They are calculated to inflame, not illuminate.
The South African farming economy and those working in and around it have plenty of problems, something that even the most optimistic observer would concede. And a great deal could be done – as it could anywhere − to make things better and more fulfilling for all its participants. These are not simple issues to deal with. Yet for there to be any prospects of success, these issues need to be dealt with on their own terms, as they exist, not as it may be politically expedient to imagine they do.
Dr Hlophe’s remarks push us in the opposite direction. Though maybe that is his intention.
[Image: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash]
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