20100412
IPS

Durban and Cape Town — Eugene Terre'Blanche, killed on his farm on Easter weekend, is catalysing racial tension in South Africa in death much as he did in his life.

Thousands of supporters and sympathisers attended the funeral of the head of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) in the rural town of Ventersdorp, in South Africa's North West Province on Apr. 9. The leader of the white supremacist organisation was killed on his farm on Mar. 29, allegedly by two of his black employees, now in custody.

The killing has put the spotlight on the tensions and violence that persist in rural South Africa between landowners - predominantly white - and black farm workers and farm dwellers.

The killing comes just as a prominent member of the ruling African National Congress party's Youth League, Julius Malema, was cited for hate speech for singing an ANC struggle song that calls on listeners to "kill the farmer". Agricultural unions representing landowners say as many as 3,000 white farmers have been murdered on farms across the country since 1994.

Farm worker organisations challenge the figure, and say black people remain subject to harassment, dispossession and assault by landowners. Terre'Blanche himself served time in prison for assaulting an employee who survived the attack, but sustained serious brain damage.

Several hundred kilometres away from Ventersdorp, in the 60 kilometres between the towns of Newcastle and Volkrust, on the northern border of KwaZulu-Natal, the landscape is tranquil enough: grazing cattle and sheep, occasionally interrupted by fields of maize, soya beans and wheat.

But race relations between the mainly white farmers and black farm-workers, and tenants in this area have been tense for decades.

Mangaliso Kubheka, leader of the Landless People's Movement (LPM), says his organisation has recorded thousands of cases of farm workers and farm dwellers being assaulted, denied water, grazing land, burial rights, cropping areas and through-ways to move from one place to another by farmers.

Apartheid legacy

Busisiwe Mbatha, an 84-year-old widow, says her family lived on what is today the Wykom farm, near Newcastle, for many years. In the 1960s, she says, their land was divided into several livestock farms and many of their neighbours forced out of the area.

"Only a handful of families were left behind and our men provided labour to the farms. When my husband died, my children also worked on the farm. The previous farmers were okay because they allowed us to keep livestock and we had plots where we planted our fruits and vegetables. But when the latest of these farmers sold their land in 2003, a new and harsher farmer took over."

Mbatha says that he tried to evict the family, but they resisted. "Three years ago he just came into our kraal and took all my 17 cows. He went for the cows of four other families living on the same farm. He didn't utter a word and I tried going to the police without any help," she says tearfully.

She says this farmer has since leased the farm and left without compensating them for their livestock. Residents on the farms say the majority of landowners mistreat farm tenants and farm labourers alike.

"Many people in the farms still live in fear, grinding poverty and landlessness. Some are forced to drink dirty water that they share with cows because farmers deny them access to clean water. Our people are assaulted and are prone to diseases because of living in these inhumane conditions," Kubheka told IPS.

Robin Barnsley, the president of the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (KWANALU), admitted that some farmers in the province are abusing the rights of farm workers and tenants but he said farm relations in the province have come a long way.

"One would not want to generalise, but there are places where there are tensions and frustrations and there are areas where relationships are good and sound. There are farmers who are mistreating people living in the farms. But these farmers are a tiny minority. I would say it boils down to personalities and other issues related to those personalities," he said.

Barnsley said most of the tension results from the slow pace of land reform. "I think the officials dealing with land reform are not doing their jobs properly and this leads to frustrations from communities who have lodged claims are waiting years for their claims to be finalised."

He adds that some farmers have taken the initiative to help farm labourers by providing them with land for free. "There a number of these initiatives. One that comes to mind is between Ladysmith and Bergville and another one in Melmoth. Apart from this, (there is the) KWANALU development desk which helps mentoring small farmers and communities engaging in commercial farming."

Land rights activists concede that there some farmers have accepted and even participated in land reform and the dismantling of apartheid's legacy in rural areas. Philani Kubheka (no relation to the LPM's Kubheka) is head of a project near Ladysmith, where a farmer has donated a few hectares to farm tenants, where they have planted potatoes, cabbages and other vegetables.

"Families living in this farm keep some of the food and sell the rest. We are grateful to this farmer and wish other farmers could take a leaf from him," says Philani.

Speaking from a modest office in the provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, Musa Zakwe, the deputy director of the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA), says his organisation has compiled a list of hot-spots where most abuses take place, including the district in which Newcastle and Volkrust fall. AFRA has been chronicling abuses on farms and and trying find solutions since 1979.

"Although the South African Constitution and laws protect people in the farms against abuses, the reality on the ground is that their rights are abused on a daily basis. What is even worse is that police don't take their concerns seriously because they tend to listen to farmers (rather) than to farm labourers or tenants," he told IPS.

Zakwe adds that government agencies have been too lenient on abusive farmers and that land reform policies have been far too slow to have any effect in improving the lives of people living in the farms.

He says in the main farmers are clinging on to land they barely use in the hope that government will pay more for it eventually, but unrest is on the increase amongst landless people as the wait for land drags on.

"We have tried to meet with (farmers) to resolve these issues and find amicable solutions so that we could live together and share the land, but many of them ignore us," says the LPM's Kubheka. "They tell us that we must go to the government and solve the problem there," he said.

"It is not that we like or condone what happened to Terreblanche," Kubheka says. "Many people think his killing was planned but I beg to differ. Why do you think a 16-year-old boy (developed) such hatred that propelled him to commit such a crime? If my child grows up seeing me being assaulted and belittled daily, he grows up with that hatred and one day he may want to avenge my sufferings, without any instigation or incitement from me."