Over the last couple of weeks, three disturbing stories have garnered some public attention.
One relates to a grotesque case in Limpopo where two women were shot and supposedly fed to pigs; the second, from the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, saw two farmworkers assaulted and dumped in a dam, presumably to die; and the third concerns a case where a child was injured by a vehicle, allegedly deliberately, by a farmer in retaliation for theft of oranges from his orchard.
The stories describe disparate incidents across the country, but they are all united in their connection to farming. This was captured in a cartoon run on the Daily Maverick, drawn by 2lani (real name, Thulani Ntsong), one of the “Ubuntoonists”. This showed a demonic farmer – horns, red-tinted skin (plus two-toned shirt and chunky knee socks, the stereotypes being clear) – driving a tractor tagged “Human Rights Abuses” over a hapless child, with the tyres leaving tracks on the ground reading “Systemic Issue”. (Clumsily attempting to deflect accusations of generalisation, a sign is tacked on the tractor saying “Certain Farms”.)
Inevitably, though, the stories have individually and collectively been seized upon to drive one of the most enduring and sinister political narratives existing in South Africa: the systemic abuse (as the cartoon declares) of farmworkers by farmers.
Pause for a moment on the idea of narrative. Narrative is the manner in which events and facts are connected, contextualised and interpreted. Because the world is complex and fast-changing, we turn to assumptions and beliefs – sometimes to things we want to believe – to organise our understanding of the world.
Politically, narratives stitch together details to construct meanings that are useful in contests for power. Political narratives are imbued with powerful references to history, to injustices suffered and achievements attained. They are the legitimating thought-patterns behind political action, explaining the present, justifying action and envisioning futures.
Reality itself
Narratives reflect understandings of reality, but they may not reflect reality itself. The latter is often too complex, and where narratives are deployed to further particular sectarian interests, factual accuracy of contextual nuance is at best of secondary importance, and maybe of no importance at all.
I’ve touched on this often before. In South African lore, “the land question” occupies an outsized degree of political and emotional importance. While poll after poll over decades have shown that “the land question” is very much a niche concern, and barely registers in terms of agrarian land, it has been seized on by a vocal activist community. The latter is a heterogenous group: politicians, journalists, organisers. Their agenda is not in the main economic, though this may be part of it, but fundamentally political and ideological.
Integral to dealing with “the land question”, politically understood, is finding a suitable enemy. This is the role assigned to the white, commercial farmer, bolstered by what I have termed the brutal farmer stereotype.
The “farmer” in this view is not an agricultural entrepreneur, cultivating crops and raising livestock in a tough environment. Rather he (and in symbolic terms – as in the cartoon cited above – the farmer is always a “he”) is an avatar, a bearer of historical guilt, a present-tense expression of land theft. Violence against his workers is an explosive and tangible expression of this.
This, then, is a narrative that not only has currency, but is actively pushed, as in 2Lani’s cartoon. Indeed, he makes this explicit through the words “Systemic Issue”.
Regular pattern
The reality is that much of the reporting on the abuse of “workers” by “farmers” is nothing of the sort. A regular pattern is that an instance of abuse of a black person in a rural or semi-rural setting (and in at least one instance, suburban Pretoria) is automatically described as being another example of violence “on farms” “against farmworkers” by “farmers”. Or some combination of these signifiers.
My earliest recognition of this was an account of the death of a six-month old child, Angelina Zwane, in 1998. She was hit by a bullet fired by one Nicholas Steyn, who lived on a smallholding near Benoni. As it turns out, the shot was meant as a warning – hideously reckless in my view, and I am sure that most gun owners would agree – but the round ricocheted and hit the child. Steyn was not a farmer. He worked as a salaried employee, and had nothing to do with agriculture. Yet he was frequently damned as “Farmer Nicholas Steyn” (farmer seemingly intended to be a self-explanatory moral condemnation), and the case held out as an indication of the hellscape on South Africa’s farms.
Wash, rinse, repeat over the years. One-time Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Lulu Xingwana (she of the gold-trimmed travelling toilet fame), let rip that farmers regularly “rape and assault” their workers. She couldn’t provide evidence to back this up, but demands for her to do so arguably missed the point. She was reiterating a statement of the way things were and the way things should be according to a narrative script, not empirical reality. For the ideologue, the former may be more real than reality.
And so it has been in recent years. There was the Springs “farmer” who made his employee drink sewage. Except that he was actually a used-vehicle dealer, a fact obvious to someone simply driving past the property. Then was the “farmer” in Bergville who shot and killed someone who’d entered his “farm” to retrieve some goats. But the “farm” was a mere half hectare in size – more of a yard or garden – and the “farmer” had no discernible connection to actual agriculture. He was described to me as suffering from “mental challenges”.
Not a farm
Earlier this year, two “farmers” in the Groblersdal area were arrested for assaulting a “farm security officer”. However, the two men operated a security company, not a farm, and the alleged victim was guarding network infrastructure. As far as I could establish, there was no farm connection to be seen.
I could continue, but the point should be clear.
Circling back to the cases that have prompted the latest round of this narrative, it’s worth noting that the assault in KwaZulu-Natal was allegedly perpetrated by security officers, and the accused in the Western Cape case was, I am reliably informed, not a farmer.
That leaves the Limpopo case: repellent in the extreme, and I for one hope that if the accused are convicted, the full book will be thrown at them. (I do, however, think it prudent to await the finalisation of the case before pronouncing judgement.)
What I’m not seeing is the “Systemic Issue” that 2lani is claiming. “Certain farms”, yes, but there is no evidence that this is widespread.
While I’m not aware of any database detailing the violent abuse of farmworkers, or the farmers (“farmers”?) culpable in this regard, I’d be willing to guess that since the dawn of democracy, it’s unlikely that this would amount to more than a few hundred instances. If that. And keep this in perspective, since (based on estimates by Wandile Sihlobo and Johann Kirsten), there are probably between 40,000 and 50,000 serious commercial farmers in the country. Add to this the minor players – some agricultural activity for money – and this grows to a few hundred thousand. The transgressors are a miniscule minority, and an even smaller proportion.
For comparison, think sexual abuse by teachers. Very little frightens parents more than this, and we can expect passionate reactions when it is alleged. Even more so when it is proven. According to a parliamentary question asked last year, over the three-year period between 2019/20 and 2021/22, 452 cases of sexual misconduct by teachers were reported to the SA Council of Educators, while 43 had been found guilty of this offence.
Relatively uncommon problem
Each and every case is concerning, but against the 450,000-odd teachers in the country, this appears to be a relatively uncommon problem. This is the case, even if there is a significant degree of under-reporting.
There are “certain teachers”, and probably also “certain schools”, in respect of which sexual abuse is a serious problem. Likewise, there are “certain farms” in which human rights abuses take place. But in neither instance does the evidence support the “systemic” charge.
This is not to trivialise the problems that exist, or to minimise the impact of abuse when it takes place. Indeed, I would argue that trivialisation arises from driving a narrative based on ideological certainties and which makes unfounded claims and draws on bogus evidence.
Not only does this narrative push a sinister and divisive political agenda, it obscures developments across the farming economy, which complicates real policy interventions that might be useful, not least to the farmworkers, who are the nominal objects of activists’ concern.
Actually fairly compliant
One could do worse than look at a 2015 report for the International Labour Organisation, which looked at labour issues related to farming. It found that those establishments it inspected were actually fairly compliant. It also contained this sober remark:
The tendency to assume that most farm workers live on the farm, dependent on the employer for all their needs is one example, as is the stereotype of the white-owned, owner-operated family farm as the norm. In reality, employers in agriculture are increasingly diverse, as ownership patterns shift with farm consolidation, land reform and encroachment by agribusiness, as well as a growing reliance on contractors and labour brokers. Likewise, feudal relationships between farmers and farm workers are increasingly breaking down through movement off farms (for various reasons, including, but not only, evictions) and a shift away from use of permanent workers towards the use of indirect labour and short-term employment contracts. There are a number of other important shifts taking place that have a direct bearing on farm labour working and living conditions, as well as considerable diversity and complexity in employer-worker relationships. There is a strong need for research that highlights the ways in which the landscape has changed, and seeks to build consensus amongst the central role-players about the nature of trends and their root causes.
A strong need for research indeed. And also for the reflection and hard-headed analysis that it would make possible. Otherwise, our approach to reality may be as distorted as 2lani’s cartoon.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/62762640@N02/16050425410]
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