COSATU angered and deeply disgusted by the cowardly killing of black farm workers and farm dwellers by racist farmers

The Congress of South African Trade Unions is angered and deeply disgusted by the cowardly attacks directed at farm workers and farm dwellers by racist white farmers all across the country. This follows the killing of a tractor diver in Krugersdorp for using the tractor to buy lunch during a lunch break. We have also recently seen a racist white farmer shooting and killing a mourner at a funeral on his farm in Cramond in Pietermaritzburg.

COSATU calls for swift action against these racist barbarians, who are on a rampage killing black vulnerable workers. The law enforcement agencies need to do their jobs before people are tempted to take the law into their own hands. Thousands of farm workers are killed and illegally evicted everyday in this country not by some unknown criminals but by their own employers and the law enforcement agencies are failing them. These unredeemable and unreformed racists need to be arrested because they do not have a monopoly on violence and people are going to run out of patience soon.

We still see severe exploitation and slave like conditions on many farms across the country, where workers rights and human rights are violated with impunity and the plight of the workers is so severe that they are living in conditions that are a step above the grave.

This also is clear message to the ANC that the policy of land expropriation without compensation needs to implement without fear or favour. Going forward, we want to see government using its expropriation powers more aggressively and introducing a moratorium on evictions of farm workers and dwellers. Farm workers and labour tenants have not benefited from land reform; instead they face evictions reminiscent of the apartheid era. The market-based land reform policy of the State cannot benefit the poor majority of rural people. 

We need state ownership of all the land in this country in order for the democratic state to break the power of white capital and strengthen the capacity of the state to regulate land use and eliminate the arrogance of these farmers who are behaving like medieval lords against black people.

Statement issued Sizwe Pamla, COSATU national spokesperson, 8 January 2018