COSATU supports Deputy President Ramaphosa's call for an end to evictions on Farms
COSATU in the Western Cape welcomes the call from the Deputy President at the community meeting held in Paarl on 01 November 2014 with Agri Farmers Organisations and Farm Worker organisations.
The Deputy President had called for a moratorium on the eviction on Farms, whilst the discussion for a future dispensation on farms is finalised. The Deputy President and the participants of the Conference have also been excited about the fact that real land reform and new type of partnerships are emerging on farms and especially welcomed the Solms Delta experience in Franschoek as a desirable model. This kind of model has seen the farms output and profitability grow as well as a greater contribution to food security.
COSATU welcomes the good farmers who are prepared to put in place a new fair and just dispensation in Agriculture and will work with them. For the bad farmers who want to hang onto the old apartheid theft and those old ‘boere' manners, there is no future for them in South Africa.
COSATU called on all evictions including those before 1994 to be addressed and for workers to return to the land, as farmers have evicted workers to deny them any rights of tenure. The starting point of COSATU is that farmlands were stolen before the 1913 Land Act through wars and legislation. That means that farmers still on the land since those days, are occupying stolen land. If farmers have bought the land from the 1913 thieves, then they have bought stolen land and it is illegal occupation.
COSATU supports the Deputy President's view that serious negotiations must define a new agricultural environment between the role players on the farms and in the agricultural Community. COSATU will continue its discussions at NEDLAC to conclude a new deal for farms and the entire agricultural value chain. Should we be unable to find a new deal in negotiations with farmers then a country wide strike will take place in Agriculture.
Statement issued by Tony Ehrenreich, COSATU Western Cape Provincial Secretary, November 3 2014
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