A report entitled "Ripe with Abuse", released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) this past week has been the subject of much publicity and debate over the past week.
The report, compiled on the basis of interviews with 117 "current and former-farm workers" in the Western Cape fruit and wine industries (only about 85 of whom are current farm workers), paints a bleak picture of the living and working conditions in this sector.
The report was presented to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Rural Development and Land Reform this week, where questions were posed by MPs from all sides of the political spectrum about whether its findings could reasonably be extrapolated to the entire industry in the Western Cape province, which comprises some 6 000 farming enterprises and 121 000 farm workers.
The author of the report, Kaitlin Cordes, admitted that that her findings did not amount to a representative sample which could be used to generalise about the fruit and wine industry throughout the province, but argued that it was instead a qualitative picture of the lives of some of the farm workers she interviewed. In addition, the HRW spoke to only 14 farm owners in compiling this report.
It has also been difficult to ascertain how the interviewees in the report were identified, apart from Ms Cordes' acknowledgment that trade unions and civil society organisations facilitated her interactions with workers in the study. It is important for Ms Cordes and HRW to say what methodology was followed to determine whether these interviews represented a balanced and full picture of the fruit and wine industries in the Western Cape.
Certainly, the title alone "Ripe with Abuse" implies that these problems are widespread, yet no effort seems to have been made to ensure that the contents of the report are sufficiently representative to make such a claim.