land occupations

‘LAND OCCUPATIONS ARE THE NEW WAY OF DOING LAND REFORM’

Issued by the Food Sovereignty Campaign

December 2011

For the white owners of South Africa’s farm lands, land occupations evoke the fear and loathing of social collapse and historical retribution that form as much part of their heritage as their claim to more than 80% of the arable land of the country. But for the black dispossessed, land occupations are becoming increasingly important, both as a last resort in the struggle for survival, and as the next step in the effort to build a winning movement for pro-poor social change. In November 2011 there were two cases of land occupations within the same week reported on news24.com. In KwaZulu/Natal on 30 October 2011, members of the Mpumuza community took over land outside Hilton saying ‘we are tired of seeing black people oppressed,’ and outside Mthatha in the Eastern Cape around the same time another group occupied land belonging to the United Reformed Church claiming that the land ‘was taken by force and grabbed by missionaries. People have taken the decision to go back and occupy their forefathers' land as beneficiaries.’ Ironically, this happened in the time when the politicians and officials that run the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform were crisscrossing the country with their newly released Green Paper that promised a more committed and efficient land reform programme with more redistribution and more agricultural support for land reform beneficiaries. Does this mean that landless people or at least a section among them, have lost patience with the state and the market, and have decided to act directly, by themselves, for themselves, through themselves?

THE FOOD SOVEREIGNTY CAMPAIGN 

The Food Sovereignty Campaign believes the time has come for land occupations. This movement of emerging farmers and farm dwellers is based in the Western and Northern Cape provinces. It was started in 2008 and initially concentrated on public pressure on the state through marches, pickets, sit-ins, discussions, submissions, a symbolic land occupation and laying charges at the Human Rights Commission. Other than that, it put a lot of effort into developing its activists through popular education and organising. This drew assurances, promises and sometimes lectures and insults from the politicians and officials, but little or no action. Now the activists in the campaign believe the time has come to put greater emphasis on direct action. ‘Land occupations are the new way of doing land reform,’ says Johan Jantjies, the convenor of the Food Sovereignty campaign. ‘Recently the government brought out a Green Paper on Land Reform. They made it clear they have no plan of how to get the land from the capitalist owners. Without such a plan how can you even talk about land reform? We have a plan and that is for the landless to occupy the land.’

Jantjies is a member of the Ithemba Farmers Association, a group of about 300 black families that started farming on a sandy stretch of government owned land between Khayelitsha and Eerste River in Cape Town. For the last three years they have been fighting the joint efforts of the departments of public works, human settlements and the Cape Town City Council to evict them. ‘In our meeting the delegate of the Ithemba Farmers Association reported that nothing much happened there in the last two months,’ says Rosina Secondt, an emerging farmer from Pella on the Orange River and a previous convenor of the Food Sovereignty Campaign. ‘They are still farming on the land. I am claiming that as a victory for the Food Sovereignty Campaign. The people did not have jobs or income. They occupied the land. The municipality, three government departments, lots of lawyers, the police and a mining company all worked together to throw the Ithemba Farmers off the land. They all failed and they are still failing. Why? Because the Ithemba Farmers mobilised themselves and the Food Sovereignty Campaign mobilised supporters from as far as Pella, 700km away in the Northern Cape. We physically stopped those who tried to evict the farmers. Today the Ithemba farmers are making a living on the land that they otherwise would not have had. That is a victory!’

The Ithemba farmers are not the only members of the Food Sovereignty Campaign occupying land. Patrick Steenkamp of the Loeriesfontein Emerging Farmers Association explains that they have been doing the same thing. ‘We became fed up with the municipality. They collected rent but they did nothing for us. There were no services. So we decided to develop the land ourselves. We put up our own fencing and our own windmills. We refused to pay rent. This has been going on for more than two years now. The land reform has failed us. The municipality has failed us. We will not fail ourselves. We are occupying this land. We will not be removed. Ever!’ At the meetings of the Food Sovereignty Campaign the emerging farmers of Kareeberg heard about the actions of their Loeriesfontein comrades and decided to follow their example. ‘Our members cannot be held back anymore,’ says Basil ‘Die Hond’ Eksteen of the Kareeberg Emerging Farmers Association. ‘They are just too angry. We talked, we wrote letters, we marched – now we are ready to take the land. The municipality gives us no support and now they want to charge us these impossible rents. They know we can’t pay. They just want to get rid of us and put white, commercial farmers on the land. We are in contact with a group in the Kimberley district that has occupied a farm of one of the richest land owners there. A man that owns fifteen farms while people sit with nothing. Neither the police nor the army has been able to remove these members from the land. If they could do it, so can we!’ Eksteen and his comrades published their intention to occupy the land without paying rent in a local newspaper, an intention they quickly carried out. The municipality had to concede the legitimacy of this action, and has undertaken to let the farmers use the land rent free while involving them in the drafting of a new policy around commonage land.   

For the most part these actions developed organically through people’s spontaneous reactions to poverty and perceived government inaction, but now the Food Sovereignty Campaign is ready to promote land occupations as a deliberate tactic. For the past year the members of the campaign have been attending a series of popular education workshops discussing the necessity, risks, limitations and benefits of land occupations in the light of contemporary and historical examples of movements that successfully used this tactic. Ricado Jacobs, agrarian studies scholar and member of the Food Sovereignty Campaign explains, ‘Land occupations should not be elevated to a panacea for other and all problems. It must be located within a broader framework, which the Food Sovereignty Campaign has in the form of food sovereignty, agro-ecology and anti-capitalism. But we must never forget that now and historically land occupations offered the only means through which the landless could engage in land reform directly, confront capital and gain control of the means of production.’

GOVERNMENT AND LAND REFORM

South Africa’s political system and governing elite are of course quite hostile to these kinds of land occupations. Property rights are enshrined in the constitution of the country and the land reform programme is based on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ model, where private land owners have absolute discretion over whether to sell and at what price. They have priced the land not only out of reach of land hungry blacks, but often even out of reach of the state. There is no provision in law, like that of Brazil, which allow hungry people to grow food on unused land of absent owners. Some municipalities have gone so far as to create special ‘anti-land invasion’ police units that quickly developed a reputation for ruthless brutality.

Since 1996 the South African government has followed a strict neo-liberal policy path that includes cutting state expenditure on ‘unprofitable’ social services. A key strategy has been to cut transfers of funds from the national treasury to local governments by more than 90% over a ten year period, while at the same time transferring responsibility for delivering social services such as housing, water, electricity, health and policing from the national to local governments. The national treasury could thus balance its books and even generate a surplus, but municipalities had to deliver far more services to many more people with much less resources. They therefore became trapped in a well known cycle of poor service delivery, desperate cost recovery and community protests. As far as municipal land is concerned the pressure became overwhelming on municipal executives to charge the highest possible rents. Emerging farmers find it unaffordable, which leaves them effectively landless, as the national land reform process is a complete failure that managed to transfer less than 5% of agricultural land from white to black ownership.

In September the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform released its Green Paper on Land Reform that ‘seeks to provide new policy direction on Land Reform and it also proposes the establishment of institutions to support the implementation of the policy proposals contained in the

Green Paper,’ according to the notice in the Government Gazette. A new policy direction is indeed needed in the face of growing rural poverty and the failure of land reform. However, as the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies noted, the green paper provides almost ‘no guidance on any of the crucial questions facing land and agrarian reform in South Africa’ and ‘defers policy making’. The only conclusion, unanimously drawn by all land reform NGOs and movements, is that government policy and the situation of the rural masses will continue as now.

‘This is where land occupations has such a crucial role to play,’ says Herschelle Milford of the Surplus People Project. ‘There is this block on the national conversation on land reform and the equitable distribution of the land. That block is private property. As long as land reform must bow down before private property it will go nowhere. Land occupations can unblock the conversation and challenge the status quo. There is no justification that people should starve while there is unused land. The focus must be on needs. In Nababeep people occupied the land and involved women and children in the process. They are not only producing food for themselves, but they are also building a healthy community. The land owners were not affected at all, because they have enough. Land occupations are even cheaper to the state than market based land reform. The experience of Brazil, where they wrote in the country’s constitution that landless people have the right to occupy unused land, shows that government does not have to oppose land occupations.’ In their 2005 book ‘Reclaiming the Land,’ Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros notes that in Brazil ‘from 1995 to 1999, 85 per cent of all new settlements conducted by government had their immediate origin in direct land occupations; 2800 land reform settlements were created with nearly 300000 families in total, and these settlements followed 1800 occupations with 256000 families participating.’     

This view is further supported by the findings of a study by the Economic Commission for Africa of the United Nations. In May 2009 it published a major report on ‘Land Tenure Systems and their Impacts on Food Security and Sustainable Development in Africa,’ which, after a comprehensive survey of the land issues of the continent, concludes that ‘recently, illegal squatting or land occupations, albeit of a sporadic nature, have been more influential in keeping the land redistribution issue on the agenda than formal organizations of civil society or their recognized community-based organizations.’   

FOOD SECURITY AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Land occupations ‘could hold catastrophic implications for investor confidence, food security and job creation,’ says Theo de Jager, vice president of Agri SA and chairman of the organisation’s Transformation Committee in a media statement on the Agri SA website. This view has all the weight of capitalist ideology behind it and exerts a powerful influence, including on government. As Grasian Mkodzongi explains in his article ‘South Africa: The Next Frontier for Land Occupations’ published on allafrica.com on 15 April 2010: at least since the Bredell land occupation in 2001, the South African government has been obsessed with sending ‘the right signal to the markets that Zimbabwean-style land “invasions” were not allowed here.’ Julius Malema, the suspended ANC Youth League president, touched a raw nerve in April this year when he told a gathering, ‘We have to take the land without payment, because the whites took our land without paying and transformed them into game farms.’ Both President Zuma and Deputy President Motlanthe were quick to repudiate the youth leader and give assurances that land reform will take place according the constitution that entrenches property rights. Even the vague and mild suggestions of the Green Paper on Land Reform to place undefined restrictions on private property are accompanied by the constant refrain that government will make sure that land reform does not compromise food security, as if land reform inherently threatens food security.       

‘Land occupations is a necessary and appropriate strategy,’ says Thabo Manyathi of the Association For Rural Advancement. Manyathi rejects the idea that land occupations threaten food security. ‘I have seen with my own eyes how land occupations are good for food security and for land reform. People reoccupied the Ndumo Game Reserve from where they were evicted in the past. They produced so well on the land that government actually made more land available to them, all without affecting conservation. Another group of women farm dwellers were evicted in New Hanover. They had nowhere to go and were desperate; therefore they decided to occupy the land from which they were evicted. Today they are settled, they produce enough food for themselves and for the surrounding community. If it was not for land occupations, the people would still be landless, and hungry!’

Ricado Jacobs takes the issue further and argues that land occupations are also crucial to the achievement of food sovereignty.  ‘Food sovereignty requires change in the whole agro-food system, including challenges to property relations and decision making powers. This is not possible with the unequal land ownership we see in South Africa. Movements like the Zapatistas in Mexico and the MST in Brazil have shown how land occupations can be used to challenge capitalist property relations and hierarchical top-down decision making. In South Africa exploitation and poverty are normalised, and land occupations can help put a stop to it. Of course the best scenario would be to link land occupations to an agriculture that addresses the ecological crisis, in other words agro-ecology, and to a broad process of popular education and mass mobilisation that does not only focus on farmers but involve the broad working class masses in both rural and urban areas. Food sovereignty is not just a farmer or even rural issue after all.’

MOVEMENT BUILDING

The harsh difficulties of the lives of the dispossessed and dominated masses in the rural areas make it ever so tempting to hope, pray and wait for some elite figure or group to arise and finally provide relief and deliverance. Ideas such as ‘if only the king or the president knew about the corruption and brutality of the local land owners, he would intervene on our behalf,’ or ‘if only our man could become king or president,’ are old and widespread among poor peasants and farm workers. Its power, however, is not based on proven effectiveness, which it plainly lacks, but on its capacity to provide solace to people who feel it is beyond their power to do anything constructive about their oppression. ‘The agency of the landless and land-short has been the basic source of agrarian reform historically,’ Moyo and Yeros remind us in ‘Reclaim the Land.’ Even in cases where kings and presidents decreed land reform from above, it was in response to rebellions of peasants and farm workers from below.

In South Africa today opposition to neo-liberal land reform is dominated by professionalised NGOs, who despite the good work they are doing, cannot substitute for mass movements of the rural poor. Such movements will naturally gravitate towards land occupations as a tactic, given the absurd levels of inequality and the patent refusal of the state to do anything effective about it. Right now, however, the more important point is that land occupations, if coupled with a movement building perspective, have the ability to be the action that brings such movements into being. In a recent article on ‘Strategic Challenges for the Service Delivery Protestors in South Africa,’ Ronald Wesso, an activist in the Food Sovereignty Campaign wrote: ‘The necessity for direct action (such as land occupations) also flows from the need of activist groups to capture the imagination of the masses. It demonstrates a seriousness of purpose and a depth of feeling against injustice that not only requires but also inspires the bravery and commitment characteristic of successful movements for social change.’

‘Finally, movements of the poor need direct action precisely because they are movements of the poor. The poorest sections of society, the temporary workers, farm dwellers, rural people in former homelands, the unemployed and shack dwellers, are also the least organised. Poverty leaves no money to sustain organisers, the struggle for survival leaves little time and energy for the work of organising. Groups flare up and then die out quickly or become the turf of a more or less bureaucratic group that use their leadership positions to strike bargains for their own benefit with political parties, state organs or NGOs. Movements of the poor can only survive for any length of time if it fuses the struggle for survival with the work of organising. Only direct action makes this possible.’

CONCLUSION

Land occupations are already happening in South Africa.  Its background is growing frustration among the rural poor with persistent inequality along Apartheid patterns, and a clear failure on the part of government to work for meaningful change and listen to the unendingly articulated demands of the masses. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that the adoption of land occupations as a deliberate tactic by groups of land and agrarian activists can unlock a dynamic towards revolutionary change by mobilising mass movements of small farmers and farm dwellers that can link their struggles to movements of the urban poor and working classes for a joint rejection of the top-down capitalist property and state relations responsible for the landlessness, powerlessness and exploitation of the people. This is the direction the Food Sovereignty Campaign is moving in.    

 

   

   

     

green paper on land reform

SUBMISSION OF SURPLUS PEOPLE PROJECT ON GREEN PAPER ON LAND REFORM, 2011

INTRODUCTION

In our opinion, an analysis of the green paper supports the following contentions:

1.       The land reform programme has failed the poor and black people in general, especially women.

2.       Government is aware of this failure, but refuses to adopt fundamentally different policies for fear of upsetting white farmers/commercial agriculture and their allies, backers and advocates among the elite of the global capitalist system.

3.       The interests of the black poor and specifically that of the landless, demand that the green paper be scrapped completely and a new one be drafted by the landless masses themselves through a process of direct democracy.

4.       Civil society organisations would do well to devote the bulk of their resources towards supporting that section among the landless people that have run out of patience with the state and the market, and have started to occupy land they believe are rightfully theirs.

Our analysis and views draws on decades of experience of working with land hungry and farm dwelling communities, as well as on three workshops specifically called to the discuss the green paper with the emerging farmers and farm dwellers we work with. We were also privileged to exchange views with fellow civil society formations including AFRA, PLAAS, SCLC and the BRC, who all made early drafts of their submissions available to us. We see our submission as supplementary to theirs, without denying the possibility of different views on some of the issues.

Our views will be presented under the following headings:

·         Justifying land reform versus justifying land ownership

·         Land reform and neo-liberalism

·         Land reform, food security and food sovereignty

·         Land reform and agriculture

·         Landless people – active contributors or passive recipients?

JUSTIFYING LAND REFORM VERSUS JUSTIFYING LAND OWNERSHIP

The introduction to the green paper, with its historical overview of the racist dispossession and exploitation that colonialism and Apartheid perpetrated on black people in South Africa, seeks to provide a moral justification for land reform. 17 years after the 1994 elections, this should not be necessary but apparently it is. The take of the green paper on this overriding issue, leaves us with more questions than answers.

It is not clear, for example, why land restitution should be constrained by the cut off date of the passing of the Native Land Act of 1913. People dispossessed before that date, and by different methods, suffer the historical consequences of their dispossession the same as those affected by the act. Morally, they have the same claim to restitution as the victims of the 1913 Land Act. If government has a different view to this, as it apparently has, then it should be argued, not just stated in the way the green paper does.

The most important question, however, was left unasked and therefore unanswered in the green paper. It is not whether land reform is justified, but whether the ownership rights of white people are justified. Given this history of colonialism and Apartheid, and given the fact that it is these historical processes that has made land ownership a white privilege in present day South Africa, what is the moral justification for this privilege and ownership? Why should land reform make concessions to the interests of white land owners, as is assumed by the green paper? If black people are supposed to get 30% of the land, why are whites entitled to 70%? Nowhere is this explained, but the assumption runs not only through this green paper, but through the government’s land reform programme as a whole. The claim of the dispossessed to what they have lost is argued, but the claims of the beneficiaries of this dispossession are just assumed.   

LAND REFORM AND NEO-LIBERALISM

The green paper makes no attempt to locate land reform within the context of government’s policy direction as a whole. It therefore cannot identify the underlying causes of the failures of land reform over the past 17 years. These causes have all to do with the commitment of the government to neo-liberal capitalism.

Much is made of the supposed failure of the farms of land reform beneficiaries. Are these the only farms that ‘failed’? The truth is that the liberalisation of South Africa’s agriculture in keeping with the extremist ideology of neo-liberalism, led to the commercial failure of the majority of white farmers in South Africa, whose farms ended up in the hands of mega rich agribusinesses that can prosper because they can manipulate the world’s food system and exploit economies of scale. The green paper overlooks this completely. One is left with the ugly racist impression of black incompetence.

The other question concerns the very way we understand failure and success in agriculture. Neo-liberalism understands success in terms of profit. A farm that grows its profit is successful even if its actions lead to greater poverty and hunger. This is exactly how government understands success in farming, despite weak protestations to the contrary. Subsistence farming is therefore almost inherently seen as a failure, despite its proven record as a weapon to combat hunger.

Neo-liberalism also constrains land reform by its commitment to cut corporate taxes and social spending. As a result the budget available for land reform is simply too small, making government put too many beneficiaries on any given piece of land, with too little support, which in turn also leads to farm failure.

But perhaps the ultimate constraint that neo-liberalism places on land reform is in its commitment to the protection of property rights. A land reform programme that succeeds from the point of view of the landless must of necessity disrespect the property rights of the current land owners. The green paper, with its mention of unspecified restrictions and conditions on freehold tenure, falls far short of this.

Fixing land reform therefore requires that government abandon its commitment to neo-liberal capitalism.     

LAND REFORM, FOOD SECURITY AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

In the green paper there is the refrain that government will make sure that land reform in no way compromises food security. This is an unjustified concession to the position of organised commercial agriculture that says that land reform is a threat to food security, and conversely that commercial agriculture is good for food security. Government needs to think this through and take a clear position.

The rural poor do not have food security, even when working on and living close to profitable commercial farms. In fact for the rural poor, land reform offers the only hope of attaining food security. At the same time commercial agriculture and food security have a far from mutually supportive relationship. Commercial farmers do whatever is profitable, not what promotes food security. Therefore thousands of hectares of the best land are devoted to wine and game farms that do nothing for food security, but actually undermine it for the poor. Or they cover fertile soil with single crops like oranges that does little for food security, or they grow feed for animals instead of food for humans. The latest growth area many commercial farmers are looking into is the production of bio-fuels, which will be a food security disaster for millions.

The green paper uses the concept of food sovereignty without defining it. This is a pity as more diligence in researching the meaning of food sovereignty might have given a more accurate appreciation of commercial farming. La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasant farmers and agricultural workers, developed the concept of food sovereignty during their struggle against the devastating effects of commercial farming dominated by giant business corporations on the livelihoods, job security and tenure security of the rural masses. They therefore understand that smaller farms owned by those that work it, producing for local communities with environmentally friendly agricultural methods are crucial to the achievement of food sovereignty. The agribusiness corporations that are the main advocates and beneficiaries of neo-liberal policies in agriculture are the enemies of food sovereignty. 

LAND REFORM AND AGRICULTURE

Land reform is firstly about land ownership and access, about land redistribution aimed at ending racist and sexist discrimination. However, the chemical-industrial model of farming pursued by current land owners make land reform also about responding to the environmental degradation caused by commercial agriculture. The green paper is silent about this and one can only assume that it supports the continuation of the current dominant model of agriculture.

We believe this is a big shortcoming. Land reform also needs to include a vision of the type of agriculture desired on redistributed land. Specifically it needs to support agricultural methods that do not damage the environment and concentrate land and wealth in the way that the chemical-industrial model does. We believe Agro-Ecology needs to be part and parcel of land reform, and that state support should be biased in favour of this type of agriculture that values social equity and environmental health.

LANDLESS PEOPLE – ACTIVE CONTRIBUTORS OR PASSIVE RECIPIENTS?

The green paper proposes a series of new institutions – a land management commission, a land valuer-general, and a land rights management board with land rights management committees. These institutions do not propose to give any new powers or resources to landless people. Instead it would create a national network of forums where land reform activists can sit down and talk to state bureaucrats and white farmers, trying to persuade them to act with some concern for the landless. Unfortunately the record of such sit-downs is rather dismal. From the beginning of land reform landless people and their supporters in civil society have made countless submissions and had endless meetings arguing for the same thing. The pathetic failure of land reform and the relentless growth of rural misery is testament to the ineffectiveness of dialogue between those with power and money and those with nothing.

The truth is that land reform will only succeed to the extent that landless people are able to organise themselves into movements strong enough to defy, challenge and overthrow the oppressive power of the present neo-liberal state capitalist system. Every successful land reform programme in the history of the world has been driven by such movements. A key tactic that they used was to simply occupy and use land they felt entitled to. This is already happening in South Africa. If the green paper was serious about land reform it would recognise this and declare it legitimate. In Brazil, for example, the right of landless people to occupy unused land is officially recognised. In South Africa land occupations by the poor, though not officially recognised, is nevertheless justified in our view as long as racism, sexism, poverty, inequality and violence prevail as it does.

Lutzville protest against Monsanto GMOs

*press release – for immediate release* 

5 October 2011

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY CAMPAIGN

MONSANTO GMO EXPERIMENT REJECTED BY LUTZVILLE COMMUNITY

EMERGING FARMERS MOBILISING RESIDENTS FOR ANTI-GMO PICKET

The Lutzville Emerging Farmers Forum and the Food Sovereignty Campaign are mobilising residents of the West Coast town to come together this Friday and reject the experiments with genetically modified maize conducted by Monsanto, the giant American agribusiness corporation, in collaboration with South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council (ARC). This is the latest round in an ongoing conflict that sees marginalised, poor emerging farmers pitted against a corporation with a global reputation for practically limitless wealth and ruthlessness, loyally supported by a state owned institution. The ARC and Monsanto are experimenting with maize genetically modified to withstand drought, which local emerging farmers have opposed through a submission to the GMO council, community meetings and a march.

‘We have been talking to AfricaBio, Monsanto and the ARC,’ says Davine Witbooi of the Lutzville Emerging Farmers Forum, ‘but they take us for a joke. While we were still negotiating we saw in the paper they had already applied for a permit to extend the experiment. Why can Monsanto come from America, and with the ARC decide what this land should be used for, while the emerging farmers are starving for land? This is not America’s land; it is not the land of the ARC. The land should rightfully belong to the people, and the poor should have first option to feed themselves from the land. Now the land is being used for experiments that will serve to make some rich corporation even richer. This picket is a warning. We are still polite. The time will come when we will simply take the land.’

Genetically modified crops have long been rejected by many governments and food, land and environmental activists for its under-regulated and under-researched health and environmental negative effects, of which clear evidence are emerging. Monsanto is one of just six giant business corporations that have used their wealth to steamroll countries into allowing GMOs, because these crops allow greater control of the food chain for these corporations and, of course, greater profits. Higher food prices, bankruptcies among small farmers and rural job losses have been some of the social consequences of this drive to make the super rich mega rich.

On Friday 7 October the activities in Lutzville will start at 10h00 with an open educational session at the Uitkyk Community Hall. At 12h00 there will be a picket at Klipheuwel farm where the experiment is taking place. End

For more information contact

Davine Witbooi 0715922361 or Ricado Jacobs 0828907551

Fear and activism among farm dwellers

Researching fear and activism among farm dwellers in Citrusdal region

1.       Introduction – why this project

The farm dwellers that created the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum were dissatisfied with the living and working conditions of farm workers in the Citrusdal region, and with the previous and existing efforts to organise farm dwellers to fight for better conditions. Both the depressed living and employment conditions of farm dwellers and the difficulties in organising them are well known; the two are closely related. Farm workers are among the lowest earners and find it difficult to put money aside for organisational expenses. Low literacy and educational levels make for low organisational skills. Long working hours, alcohol abuse, and lack of meeting places also make organising more difficult. Most farm workers work only seasonal, with no job security, which make joining unions and similar organisations almost impossible. The permanently employed often live on the farm where they work and risk eviction should they risk their job. Added to this, farm owners often employ whole families, so rebels risk not only their own jobs and homes, but that of their families as well. Farm dwellers live in small, scattered and remote communities, difficult for organisers to reach and difficult for farm dwellers to reach meetings from. In addition, access is controlled by owners and organisers can be prevented from entering the farm. As a consequence of these and other factors, farm workers are among the workers with the lowest levels of unionisation, and those that do belong to unions are likely to find that the union leaders and officials find it difficult to represent and serve them properly.

The starting idea behind the Farm Workers Forum was to have a local structure that depend on local activists who are farm dwellers themselves to carry out its tasks, instead of unions that often depend on town based officials to represent farm workers, and who do not as rule mobilise farm dwellers beyond labour relations issues. This orientation made quick initial progress possible and the forum soon developed a regular membership of more than 100, a functioning structure and leadership, and a good reputation among farm dwellers in the area; which is more than many a union were able to manage. However, the general difficulties in organising farm dwellers were soon felt by the Farm Workers Forum, who found it difficult to grow beyond its initial membership and to mobilise supporters into the protest actions deemed necessary by the forum.

After discussion of possible tactics the forum membership felt research around the obstacles to movement building among farm dwellers. They approach the Surplus People Project, an NGO with which they had longstanding ties, to facilitate such research. On Sunday, 21 November 2010 a focus group of farm workers and dwellers from farms in the Citrusdal area met to discuss this research project with the Surplus People Project aimed at supporting the struggles of the farm dwellers in the area. There was about 60 people in the group, almost all employed in minimum wage jobs on farms, most being Afrikaans speaking Black people classified as Coloured during the Apartheid era, consisting of just more than half women with one or two transgendered persons as well.

At the time of the discussion the participants were very much focused on a protest action they were planning for about a month later. This was to take the form of a public speak out in the main street of the town at its busiest time, during which the farm dwellers planned to name and shame the exploitative White farmers in the region. Their experience while mobilising for this and other recent protest actions provided the immediate starting point for identifying the research they felt would be most useful to them.

The activist farm dwellers have come to see resistance, mobilisation and protest as main means through which to defend their well being and achieve favourable social change. They want to build a movement through which farms workers can effectively shape society in ways that do away with their poverty and oppression. The biggest obstacle to this, in their view, is fear. In general farm dwellers desperately want change, but most of them do not become involved in building the necessary movements to achieve it because they fear the reactions and punishments of the farm owners, the rich, the state, the Whites, the men and God.         

The group unanimously agreed that this fear should be the focus of the research. What is the nature of this fear? What are its causes, consequences and possible cures?

2.       The research process

The research process was a joint effort between the Surplus People Project and the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum. SPP took responsibility for the day to day implementation of the project, while overall control of both the content and process of the research was exercised by the Farm Workers Forum with some input from SPP. Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza and his PhD student Fani Ncapayi, both of the University of Cape Town, also offered valuable advice. The following is a timeline of the research process that includes some projections into the future:

21 November 2011 – A general meeting of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum constitutes itself as a focus group facilitated by SPP in order to formulate the project. SPP then writes up the discussions and decisions of this group in the form of a research proposal.

April 2011 – A meeting between SPP and Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza and Fani Ncapayi, both of whom have read the proposal and are able to draw on their extensive experience in agrarian scholarship and activism to offer advice to the project.

16 April 2011 – SPP facilitates a general meeting of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum in Elandskloof to formulate a research plan, including a set of questions that would form the basis for the questionnaire. Fani Ncapayi also participates. SPP uses the questions formulated by this meeting to draft a questionnaire.

27 May 2011 – SPP and the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum has a workshop with the fieldworkers for this project. Fieldworkers are trained in the overall nature of the project and the use of the questionnaire, the questionnaire is refined and finalised, and a test run of field interviews are conducted.

2 – 8 June 2011 – Fieldwork is completed, jointly managed by SPP and Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum.

June/July 2011 – Data is captured and collated.

23 July 2011 – A workshop of SPP and Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum discusses the collated data and gives guidance as to further analysis and the form of the research report.

6 August 2011 – A focus group of farm dwellers drawn from the farms where the research was conducted meets in order to share, discuss and triangulate the findings so far. The inputs of this focus group are to be part of the final research findings.

October 2011 – finalisation and publication of research report.

October/November 2011 – The research is presented to a public forum hosted by SPP and the Citrusdal farm Workers Forum in the Citrusdal area.

3.       Findings:

3.1 Membership of farm dweller organisations

40 people indicated that they are members of farm dweller organisations.  Of these 4 organisations can arguably be seen as specifically created to mobilise farm workers and dwellers for their rights. They are Bawusa, Citrusdal Farm Dwellers Forum, Fawu and Sikhula Sonke. In this group only the Citrusdal Farm Dwellers Forum is not a union. The unions have a combined membership of 28, with Sikhula Sonke having the highest number - 19. Added to the 2 members of the forum, this means only 30 of the 181 farm workers and dwellers interviewed belong to organisations mobilising for better working and living conditions for farm dwellers.

The reasons people put forward for belonging to these organisations focus mainly on the capacity of the organisations to represent farm workers in disputes with their employers. Another reason put forward is that membership in these organisations provides farm dwellers with knowledge and information.

136 people indicated that they do not belong to farm dweller organisations, which comes to 75.1%. 41 people, or 22.7% of respondents, gave their reason for not belonging to any organisations as simply not knowing of any organisation. This was by far the highest number. The next three biggest groups were the 13 people who said there were no organisations on their farm, the 12 who said they had not interest and the 11 who said they did not know why they were not members of these organisations. The group of 13, and probably some of the group of 11, could be added to the 41 whose reason was no knowledge. This group would then be more than 29.9% of respondents.

Only 11 respondents put forward fear of the employers as their reason for not belonging to the organisations.  To this we can probably add the 6 that gave as their reason being new or temporary workers. The rest of the responses focused on the performance, or lack of it, of the farm dweller organisations themselves. For example, 10 respondents said that the unions and organisations do not meet their expectations.

The vast majority of farm dwellers do not belong to mobilising organisations. Of the minority that does, most belong to unions. This would suggest that a focus on traditional union issues such as wages, working conditions and job security would assist the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum in attracting members. However, this does not mean other issues should be ignored. Certainly the issue of housing deserve as much attention as labour issues, with which it is closely connected in the case of farm dwellers.

More than 29.9% of respondents do not belong to organisations simply because they lack contact and information. This group can provide the Farm Workers Forum with a source of very quick growth. This growth can be even quicker, and be more sustainable, if the Forum manages to avoid the typical disappointments farm workers experience with regard to trade unions. These disappointments are not being contactable in the event of problems arising, not pitching up for meetings and disciplinary hearings, and not visiting the members regularly. Being a local group led by local farm dwellers, the Forum should be able to avoid these problems.

The issue of fear is important, but as far as recruiting members go, it seems that it is not the main obstacle. Where people have voice fear as a problem, this has been more pronounced among new and temporary workers. The fear is of being dismissed. This suggests that the Forum should focus on developing a strategy that would stop employers from dismissing workers simply because they belong to the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum.  

3.2 Speaking to white farmers, police officers and other people in authority

146 respondents indicated that they could speak freely to white farmers and other authority figures about any problems. Only 32 (17.7%) said there were serious obstacles in the way of conversations between them and white farmers about the problems caused by these white farmers. This was the only result of the survey that was vehemently challenged and rejected by the focus group of farm dwellers that met on 6 August 2011 to discuss, analyse, add to and, where called for, call into question the research results. They felt the figures were all wrong; there are many more people with problems with regard to speaking to authority figures. In fact, the focus group went so far as to unanimously agree that the vast majority of farm dwellers are unable to speak effectively to white farmers about the social problems caused by the white farmers.

One participant told a story by way of an example. A woman went into labour on a farm late one night after the owner had locked the access gate. Someone had to go tell the farmer what was happening and insist that he unlock the gate and assist with getting the woman to medical help. No one in that farm dweller community was prepared to do so for fear of the farm owner’s reaction. They rather telephoned the participant, who was on another farm and was known as a strong leader. He then had to contact the farmer in question and insist on the necessary arrangements.

The position of the focus group is supported by what we know about racism, its prevalence in South Africa, especially in the rural areas, and how it encourages interpersonal relations of white domination and black submission, often without overtly insisting on it. Their position is also supported by the discussion that took place at the meeting of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum on 21 November 2010 where this project was first agreed to and elaborated. On that day the discussants noted a possible obstacle to the project: fear is also a source of shame, men especially are taught from an early age not to admit that they are afraid. How then would the project be able to discuss and understand fear if people do not want to admit that they are afraid? This dynamic would explain why such a high number of respondents said they were not afraid at all to speak to white farmers about problems.

With these qualifications in mind, let us nevertheless look at the survey results. Of those that indicated they could speak freely, the biggest group (75 or 41.5%) indicated that they could do so because they either knew their rights, or they knew the issues, or they belonged to an organisation. There were no such dominant group among people who said they could not speak freely, most of their reasons given differed from individual to individual or was shared by 2 people. Although we would argue that 14 of the respondents, which come to 7.9% of total respondents, indicated fear of some form of victimisation as their main reason for not speaking out. 

A compromised capacity to speak out about their problems to authority figures probably affects much larger numbers of farm dwellers than survey results indicate. The results suggest that part of the solution would be to combat lack of information and isolation. Those who speak out usually had some connection to sources of information about conditions, rights and organisations. The Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum can play a big role in this regard.

3.4 What support do farm dwellers want from the Farm Dwellers Forum?

Interestingly the biggest group (25 people; 13.8%) simply wants more information about the activities of the Forum and of unions and other organisations. Another group of 16 (8.8%) wants information about rights, legislation and policies. This means by far the biggest group among respondents, 22.6%, sees information sharing as the important support activity they would want from the Forum.

The next biggest group (22) wants help with unspecified ‘problems of farm workers.’ 19 respondents want help with labour issues such as sick leave and retrenchments, 14 want help with finances, loans and wages, and 18 want help with obtaining social services such as housing, electricity, sanitation and water. Only 1 said he/she wanted the Forum to help with access to agricultural land, and 6 said the Forum should assist with resisting evictions. Small numbers of respondents are pretty evenly spread between wanting help for farm workers to overcome oppression, addressing violence and drug abuse, and improving the general conditions on farms.

These findings suggest that the Farm Workers Forum must concentrate on providing information and on being present when farm workers confront employers about working and living conditions. The information must be about broad political and social issues that affect farm dwellers, and it must be about the activities, structures and strategies of the forum itself. In the conflicts between farm dwellers and farm owners, the owners derive great power from isolating and targeting particular farm workers and dwellers that the owners view as trouble makers. The presence of the forum at such points of conflict can go a long way towards neutralising this particular source of power of the farm owners. Both these tasks are well within the capacity of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum, which suggests that it would be able to grow fairly quickly. 

3.5 Taking part in a lawful protest march and a protected strike

135 or 74.6% of respondents indicated their willingness to take part in lawful protest marches and protected strikes. A group of 40 gave their reason as simply doing something that they have a right to do. Another group of 19 or 10.5% said the reason they would participate is precisely because the proper procedures have been followed. 10 respondents said they would participate if they were properly informed. This collective group of 69, focusing on procedural issues such as rights, applications and information sharing, make up a group comprising 38.1% of the respondents.

The rest of the respondents that answered yes did not focus on procedural issues in motivating their answers. Instead, this group of 66 or 36.5% of the respondents focused on substantive issues – they were motivated by what they could gain out of such an action. Examples among this group include the 14 that said they would do it so they voices of the people could be heard, the 5 that said they would do it for better wages and working conditions and the three that indicated they would participate in order to stop evictions. There were no big subgroups among this group; they were fairly evenly divided into 20 small subgroups. Remarkably of those that said yes only 3 indicated that they had taken part in a lawful march or procedural strike before.

36 respondents (19.9%) indicated that they would not be willing to take part in a lawful protest march or a procedural strike. It is noteworthy that none of these respondents directly said that such actions do not achieve anything. Most people motivated their positions in terms of personal preferences based on their circumstances such as being too old, lacking information or not belonging to a union. An important minority of 13 (7.2%) ascribed their position to fear of violence and victimisation.

In the next question respondents were specifically asked to imagine negative things that could happen to them as a result of taking part in lawful marches and procedural strikes. It is perhaps important to note that responses to this question could give an exaggerated impression of people’s fearfulness as they are simply asked what they possibly would fear and not exactly how afraid they are. Despite this the biggest single group of respondents was the 30 that said nothing could happen to them. After this group there were four noticeable ones that said they feared being evicted (23 people), being dismissed (22 people), getting injured (20 people), and going to jail (10 people).

Respondents were then asked what must happen in order for them to take part in a lawful march and procedural strike. There is a noticeable consistency between their responses to this and earlier questions. Of the 160 that responded, 75 focused on procedural issues such as the proper procedure, arrangements, adequate information, food and transport. The rest of the responses focused on substantive issues such as stopping evictions and rights violations. The substantive issues were not dominated by big groups, the biggest being the 9 that said they would take part to stop evictions and the rest being small groups 2, 3 or 5.

Most farm dwellers are prepared to take part in lawful protest marches and protected strikes. To do so they require good information about their rights, assurance that proper procedures have been followed, and a clear understanding of how these actions would contribute to improving their lives. Those who do not want to take part do not necessarily believe that these actions are unnecessary; they either fear violence and victimisation, or they feel their personal circumstances do not allow them to participate. Among both these groups very few have actually taken part in lawful marches and procedural strikes, and it is perfectly possible that with more experience more people will be more positive about taking part in these types of actions. In the meantime, there is clearly a big base among farm dwellers if the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum would want to use lawful marches and protected strikes as part of a strategy to mobilise farm dwellers. However, the forum would do well to put serious efforts into convincing  people that they would not be evicted, dismissed, injured or jailed as a result of taking part in these actions, or alternatively that the potential gains justify these risks, or that these risks can be indeed minimised and managed.

3.6 Taking part in an illegal land occupation

Over the last twenty years countries such as Brazil, Zimbabwe and Venezuela have seen the transfer of thousands upon thousands of hectares of agricultural land from rich land owners to poor farmers and landless rural workers. South Africa has seen nothing of the sort, in spite or maybe because of an official programme of land reform. A key difference between here and there was the existence in Brazil, Zimbabwe and Venezuela of social movements of the rural poor strong enough to use land occupations as a tactic to force the taking of land from the rich. All indications are that South Africa’s extreme inequality in land ownership will persist until the rural poor are able to build movements of similar strength and tactical orientation.

A minority of 37 (20.4%) respondents indicated that they would be willing to take part in illegal land occupations. Among there in no particularly big group, the biggest being three groups of 6 each that respectively gave as their motivations that they believe the land belongs to them because it had belonged to their ancestors, that they really want their own land, and that it is a matter of justice. The rest of these respondents are divided into 14 groups of between 1 and 3 members, with 12 groups only having 1 member. The reasons they gave as their motivation included the greed of the white farmers, land that is not used productively, solidarity, bad conditions on the farms, not having a place to live, and seeking empowerment for farm workers.

As part of the preparatory work for this research, a test run was conducted on a limited number of farms with an early version of the questionnaire. The results showed an important pattern in the responses that are not shown in these results because not enough members and supporters of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum were interviewed in the actual research. We nevertheless here include an analysis of this aspect of the results of the test run because of its potential importance.

The responses of the farm dwellers can be divided into two distinct sets, remarkably without exception. The first set is the majority who are adamant that they will not even think of taking part in land occupations. Asked why not, they do not put forward moral reasons, none of them think of illegal land occupations as inherently wrong and therefore not to be taken part in. Their reasons all have to with fear of violence and dispossession by the state and white land owners. This set of respondents consists of a comprehensive cross section of the total participants. There are union members and non-members, there are men and women, young and old, permanent and casual workers, in fact, apart from being people who either live or work on farms situated around the town of Citrusdal, they have only one thing in common – they are not members of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum and have not participated in its activities.

The second set of respondents is similarly diverse except that they are all members and participants in the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum. This forum, in conjunction with SPP, has been conducting a series of popular education workshops on among other things land occupations. It included reflections on the causes and meaning of South Africa’s starkly racist land ownership patterns, critical investigations of government policies and programmes around land and agriculture, discussions of rural social movements and their tactics in countries such as Mexico and Brazil, as well as exchange visits with formerly land starved farmers that have benefitted from land redistribution in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.  These experiences have clearly given the participants a perspective on illegal land occupations that they otherwise would not have.

They have all declared a willingness to participate in land occupations, despite stating that they fear the same things that the first set identified as the factors turning them against participation completely. Popular education have given them the opportunity to question their society, their place in it, and the role of the own opinions and fears in keeping them in that place. They could therefore come to the conclusion that some risks are worth taking, especially if taken and mitigated collectively. Popular education has clearly contributed to establishing the beginnings of a base for a land occupation movement.  

The 124 (68.5%) respondents that during the actual research indicated an aversion to taking part in land occupations advanced reasons that were quite similar to those in the test run. Only 5 said that illegal land occupations were inherently wrong. The rest had instrumental issues that focused on likely negative consequences to themselves. The biggest group by far was the 49 (27.1%) that simply said they would not take part because it was illegal and therefore dangerous. To this group we should add, among others, the 4 that said they are afraid to get into trouble, the 8 that said they fear getting shot to death or going to jail, the 11 that said it was too dangerous, and the 5 that said it could have serious consequences.

In the next question respondents were specifically asked to imagine negative things that could happen to them as a result of taking part in illegal land occupations. Like with regard to participation in lawful protests and procedural strikes, it is perhaps important to note that responses to this question could give an exaggerated impression of people’s fearfulness as they are simply asked what they possibly would fear and not exactly how afraid they are.

170 people (93.9%) responded to this question. Most responses can be divided into two groups: those that most fear the responses of white farmers (77 people or 45.2% of those that responded), and those that most fear the responses of the state (67 people or 39.4% of those that responded). The other 26 did not specify who they think will assault or injure them (11 respondents), penalise them (1 respondent), damage farm products (1 respondent), fight (2 respondents), or cause accidents, arson and terrorism (1 respondents).

Among those that most feared the responses of the white farmers, the biggest group was the 36 respondents that said they feared dismissal and evictions. Among those that most feared the responses of the state, the biggest group was the 65 respondents that said they feared getting arrested. A significant group (31 or 18.2%) of those that responded said that they feared violence, either from the white farmers, the state or unspecified forces. These responses clearly reflect the intensifying racist marginalisation of farm dwellers over the last two decades, when two million were evicted by white farmers with impunity despite more than 99% of these evictions not being in compliance with the law.          

The next question asked respondents to specify what they thought should happen to bring them to appoint where they took part in illegal land occupations. A large group (55 or 30.3%) did not answer this question, or rather gave answers that meant they could not imagine taking part in such an action. The rest of the answers are spread over smaller group, although there are two significant composite groups. The first is the group of 31 or 17.1% that indicated they would take part in land occupation if they were evicted and had no homes. The second is the group of 37 or 20.4% that said they would require a good process in order to take part, a process that included support from unions and other organisations, unity and solidarity, adequate information, good planning, attention to safety, membership of an organisation, leadership from the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum, and spelling out the advantages and disadvantages.

Most farm dwellers are not prepared to take part in illegal land occupations at present, but a significant minority is. This minority can be enlarged through popular education that explains the reasons behind land occupations to farm dwellers. Fear of evictions, dismissal, arrest and violence are the main obstacles to participation. Importantly, those that face dismissal and evictions are among the most willing to consider land occupations. This suggests that should they get involved in land occupations the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum should target those farmers known for dismissing and evicting farm dwellers, and the forum should find people previously evicted from farms and recruit them to take part in these occupations. The importance of education, organisation and a collective response to threats of violence and arrest cannot be over-emphasised.

3.7 Fears holding farm dwellers back from taking action

The last question asked respondents to name the fears they thought were keeping farm dwellers from taking action for their own liberation. Its purpose was not so much to elicit new information, but to give respondents a chance to reflect on their earlier answers from the point of view of other farm dwellers instead of themselves as individuals. Maybe respondents would more readily admit to the fears of others rather than their own. In the event the responses were along the same lines as the earlier ones, no surprises or reasons for doubting its reliability.

161 people responded to this question. A big majority (105 or 65.2%) of responses are fairly evenly spread among the following 4 relatively large groups: 30 respondents simply said people were too afraid of the whites to speak, 29 said people feared being evicted most of all, 25 felt dismissals was the main fear, and 21 said farm dwellers feared violence and assault by farm owners. Some of the other, less frequent, responses were the 9 that said farm dwellers do not stand together enough, the 9 that said people feared the threats of white people, and the 3 that said the main fear was for humiliation and insults. Only 1 person identified fear of the police as the main problem, the other responses all focused on white farmers and their inclination and ability to discriminate and intimidate.

It is a well known cumulative effect of institutionalised racism that white superiority and black inferiority becomes internalised psychologically to the extent that it forms part of the basis for interactions between individual members of these groups. Overbearing arrogance becomes a default posture for whites when dealing with blacks, while at the same time blacks tend towards a position of fearful meekness in their dealings with whites. In rural settings, generally, circumstances tend to intensify this dynamic. The historic remedy for this is the overthrow of white power, the expropriation of white wealth, and possibly the dispersal of the white community as such.

The responses offer more than enough evidence of the presence of this dynamic in the Citrusdal area. What does this mean for immediate prospects? Given the deep historic roots of fear among farm dwellers, and given the continued operation of white power and wealth, how can this fear be sufficiently overcome to make possible the building of an effective movement of farm dwellers? Just as the results of this survey indicate the deep historical reasons for farm dweller fears and the consequent difficulties in doing away with it, it also offers rich guidance on how to proceed in the immediate.

Yes, the fears of farm dwellers are rooted in the general history of institutionalised racism, but it is also rooted in the experience of a specific set of vulnerabilities that are well within the capacity of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum to address. Of these the main ones are:

·         Dismissals

·         Evictions

·         Assault

·         Arrest

·         Isolation

·         Disunity.

4.       Summary and conclusions

The vast majority of farm dwellers do not belong to mobilising organisations. Of the minority that does, most belong to unions. This would suggest that a focus on traditional union issues such as wages, working conditions and job security would assist the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum in attracting members. However, this does not mean other issues should be ignored. Certainly the issue of housing deserve as much attention as labour issues, with which it is closely connected in the case of farm dwellers.

More than 29.9% of respondents do not belong to organisations simply because they lack contact and information. This group can provide the Farm Workers Forum with a source of very quick growth. This growth can be even quicker, and be more sustainable, if the Forum manages to avoid the typical disappointments farm workers experience with regard to trade unions. These disappointments are not being contactable in the event of problems arising, not pitching up for meetings and disciplinary hearings, and not visiting the members regularly. Being a local group led by local farm dwellers, the Forum should be able to avoid these problems.

The issue of fear is important, but as far as recruiting members go, it seems that it is not the main obstacle. Where people have voice fear as a problem, this has been more pronounced among new and temporary workers. The fear is of being dismissed. This suggests that the Forum should focus on developing a strategy that would stop employers from dismissing workers simply because they belong to the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum.  

A compromised capacity to speak out about their problems to authority figures probably affects much larger numbers of farm dwellers than survey results indicate. The results suggest that part of the solution would be to combat lack of information and isolation. Those who speak out usually had some connection to sources of information about conditions, rights and organisations. The Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum can play a big role in this regard.

These findings suggest that the Farm Workers Forum must concentrate on providing information and on being present when farm workers confront employers about working and living conditions. The information must be about broad political and social issues that affect farm dwellers, and it must be about the activities, structures and strategies of the forum itself. In the conflicts between farm dwellers and farm owners, the owners derive great power from isolating and targeting particular farm workers and dwellers that the owners view as trouble makers. The presence of the forum at such points of conflict can go a long way towards neutralising this particular source of power of the farm owners. Both these tasks are well within the capacity of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum, which suggests that it would be able to grow fairly quickly. 

Most farm dwellers are prepared to take part in lawful protest marches and protected strikes. To do so they require good information about their rights, assurance that proper procedures have been followed, and a clear understanding of how these actions would contribute to improving their lives. Those who do not want to take part do not necessarily believe that these actions are unnecessary; they either fear violence and victimisation, or they feel their personal circumstances do not allow them to participate. Among both these groups very few have actually taken part in lawful marches and procedural strikes, and it is perfectly possible that with more experience more people will be more positive about taking part in these types of actions. In the meantime, there is clearly a big base among farm dwellers if the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum would want to use lawful marches and protected strikes as part of a strategy to mobilise farm dwellers. However, the forum would do well to put serious efforts into convincing  people that they would not be evicted, dismissed, injured or jailed as a result of taking part in these actions, or alternatively that the potential gains justify these risks, or that these risks can be indeed minimised and managed.

Most farm dwellers are not prepared to take part in illegal land occupations at present, but a significant minority is. This minority can be enlarged through popular education that explains the reasons behind land occupations to farm dwellers. Fear of evictions, dismissal, arrest and violence are the main obstacles to participation. Importantly, those that face dismissal and evictions are among the most willing to consider land occupations. This suggests that should they get involved in land occupations the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum should target those farmers known for dismissing and evicting farm dwellers, and the forum should find people previously evicted from farms and recruit them to take part in these occupations. The importance of education, organisation and a collective response to threats of violence and arrest cannot be over-emphasised.

It is a well known cumulative effect of institutionalised racism that white superiority and black inferiority becomes internalised psychologically to the extent that it forms part of the basis for interactions between individual members of these groups. Overbearing arrogance becomes a default posture for whites when dealing with blacks, while at the same time blacks tend towards a position of fearful meekness in their dealings with whites. In rural settings, generally, circumstances tend to intensify this dynamic. The historic remedy for this is the overthrow of white power, the expropriation of white wealth, and possibly the dispersal of the white community as such.

The responses offer more than enough evidence of the presence of this dynamic in the Citrusdal area. What does this mean for immediate prospects? Given the deep historic roots of fear among farm dwellers, and given the continued operation of white power and wealth, how can this fear be sufficiently overcome to make possible the building of an effective movement of farm dwellers? Just as the results of this survey indicate the deep historical reasons for farm dweller fears and the consequent difficulties in doing away with it, it also offers rich guidance on how to proceed in the immediate.

Yes, the fears of farm dwellers are rooted in the general history of institutionalised racism, but it is also rooted in the experience of a specific set of vulnerabilities that are well within the capacity of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum to address. Of these the main ones are:

·         Dismissals

·         Evictions

·         Assault

·         Arrest

·         Isolation

·         Disunity.

An action programme that firstly focus on support and solidarity for farm dweller activists, and secondly on identifying and neutralising farm owners guilty of dismissals, evictions and assaults, will make the furious growth of a farm dweller movement a certainty. In this sense the results of this research survey offers clear guidance to the activists of the Citrusdal Farm Workers Forum:

·         Indentify at least one farm owner guilty of dismissing, evicting and assaulting people.

·         Make the operation of that farm impossible until justice has been achieved. Block roads, damage crops, destroy equipment, occupy the land, encourage all farm dwellers to do the same.

·         Do not allow individual activists to be isolated.

For the oppressed the experience of winning through struggle is the antidote to fear.