Over 100 farm workers and people living on farms, represented by Women on Farms Project (WFP), protested outside Parliament on Tuesday calling for the government to accelerate land redistribution for farm women.
The women were carrying placards reading “We demand dignified formal housing” and chanted “We want land”.
Outside Parliament, WFP director Colette Solomon handed over a memorandum to a representative of the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development.
She said that 32 years after democratic elections on 27 April 1994, farm workers today “are still facing eviction” even when they had worked on the farm “for generations”.
Farm workers and farm dwellers who are evicted are often displaced to “overcrowded informal settlements”, WFP said in their memo.
“I want to create a better life for my children,” said one of the protesters, Johanna August. She was evicted with 23 other families from a farm in Wellington in 2015 and now lives in an informal settlement called New Rest. Life is tough in New Rest, where there are frequent shack fires.
She said that she had lost her son in a fire.
“The life we live now is not the same as the farm life. Farm life was a lot better,” said August.
According to Carmen Louw, WFP co-director, the informal settlement has grown since the first few families were moved there. “Their conditions have just deteriorated,” said Louw.
She said communicable diseases such as tuberculosis are rife, waste piles up around people’s homes, and during rain the informal settlement floods.
Louw also said they are still seeing a lot of eviction cases on farms.
The memo called for a meeting with Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Mzwanele Nyhontso, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Dean Macpherson, and and Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen to discuss issues of land redistribution, evictions, and food insecurity.
They also called on Nyhontso to implement “land redistribution legislation that prioritises farm women” and to “acquire and expropriate land for redistribution, starting with unused commercial farmland”.
Nyameko Mgoqi, acting chief director at the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development, came out to sign the memo and said he would communicate it to the other departments. He said government would respond.
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