Two Saturdays ago I attended a farmworkers march to
parliament. If you’ve been following the news on the farm worker strikes in the
Western Cape you may have seen that the minimum wage was raised from 69R/day to
105R/day. Many of the farmers are still not paying their farm workers the
minimum wage and many of the laborers have seen no change in the conditions
under which they work (no ownership of land or housing, some with no
electricity or adequate housing, some with little access to water etc). We were
also marching against the concentration of resources. As a result of Dutch
imperialism and apartheid over 80% of the fertile land in South Africa is still
owned by white farmers and over 50% of farm workers experience hunger on a
regular basis.
We marched to parliament to have the voices of farm
workers heard. What was so powerful about this experience was that I could
actually see the power of the people. Here were hundreds of so called
“disempowered” people taking ownership of their voices and their power. I cant
quite explain it but it was very beautiful to see the strength of the people
when we unite. Theres really nothing else quite like it. I was also impressed
by the spirit of activism here… something I don’t feel that Ive found just yet
in the US.
Here’s some information on the 1913 Land Act which
will help put the farm workers’ struggle into context:
Until next time…
No comments:
Post a Comment