MAKE THE COUNTRY UNGOVERNABLE SAYS ANC GOVERNMENT SUPPORTERS!
Is the irony of this lost on the ANC? This "make the country ungovernable" demand is an old ANC clarion call, and now it has turned on the ruling party with a vengeance. Incongruously, it now emanates from ANC representatives in the Western Cape , the mother province of South Africa , and the home of the country's world-famous wine and fruit industry.
On the face of it, farm workers are "up in arms" about their wages. Rioting, killing, burning and general mayhem have occupied SA's media over the past week, but as it so often happens in this country, there are other dimensions and agendas at play.
A monumental political power struggle is reaching its zenith in South Africa : the Western Cape is run by the official opposition the Democratic Alliance (DA), and despite unabated ANC pronouncements about the "new democratic order" under their stewardship, they cannot abide opposition. They do not understand democracy: they came to power through the barrel of a gun - intimidation, murder and violence were always their hallmarks, and their surrogates now use the same tools to create mayhem in the Cape agricultural industry.
The ease with which striking workers at Marikana's platinum mine recently obtained a huge wage increase has emboldened the forces of chaos in the Western Cape . "Striking workers" is the term assigned to those who blocked farm roads, intimidated those employees who did not want to strike, burnt vineyards, fruit orchards and wheat crops, and set fire to farm houses, warehouses, forklifts, trucks and farm offices. One farmer was dragged from his bakkie (truck) and severely assaulted, while a farm worker was shot by the police.
Excerpts from the Facebook page of Food and Allied Workers' Union general secretary Barry Stemmet reveals a vicious campaign to "get" the farmers. The hatred emanating from his followers is breathtaking, and once again shows the racial friction that smoulders under the surface in the ANC's so-called non- racial South African democracy.
None other than the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ms. Joemat-Pettersson was seen toyi-toying with strikers at a rally in De Doorns: she told the striking workers they had "won" their battle because they had made the government (of which she is, ironically, a member) listen. "You will go down in the history books as the people who changed agriculture forever", she said. Indeed! If the strikers have their way, agriculture could change so much that the country will starve under the stewardship of the ANC and their minister of agriculture.
She also told the strikers that no worker would face criminal or disciplinary charges for taking part in the strike and that she would speak to the National Prosecuting Authority to ensure that all cases of intimidation and public violence would be withdrawn. In effect, she gave the mobs carte blanche to carry on with their destruction of an industry that took three hundred years to build up!
"Setting a precedent that it is acceptable to use violence and intimidation to gain economic and political ends is extremely dangerous" said Business Day(15.11.12).. But has South Africa forgotten how the ANC and their communist allies came to power? While "negotiating", they maintained their armed struggle. Negotiating was only one leg of the struggle. Violence was the more powerful leg, and it worked.
THE BLAME GAME
The agriculture minister blames farmers and the opposition for the Cape mayhem - they are trying to create "an apartheid colonial state", she declared. (These buzz words are becoming more frequent as the ANC's annual conference nears and the country falls apart under its stewardship. (These same racially-inflammatory comments were made by Zimbabwe 's Robert Mugabe to stir up his ramshackle followers at pre-election time. Uganda 's Idi Amin used the same tactic to arouse hatred against whites and Indians in his country, only to see them leave and Uganda descend into destitution.)
The commercial farming sector is not going to sit idly by if this anarchy spreads. Reports are coming in of wholesale violence, burning and farm occupations. The police and the SANDF are wary of doing anything to stop the chaos. Farmers must defend themselves.
WAGES
The strike apparently started as a complaint about minimum wages. TAU SA president Louis Meintjes declared in a press release that considerations about minimum wages cannot be applied to the De Doorns area in isolation. Minimum wage rates (affirmed in legislation by the ANC government) are in place all over the country. If the package of fringe benefits is included - in some cases housing, medical care, schooling, subsidized food and transport - then the wage per se is much more than the cash wage figure. .
TAU SA says the problems in De Doorns cannot be made the problem of the whole agricultural industry. Judging by comments of the ANC leader in the Western Cape Marius Fransman, it is clear that politics is playing a predominant role. The ANC clearly wants to destabilize the province in their efforts to regain to rid the Western Cape of the opposition DA. Fransman's hateful and malicious statements against farmers went unchallenged by the ANC.
(A thought: Imagine what the ANC is capable of if it loses its majority in Parliament. The ANC doesn't accept democracy and its tenet, an opposition. They pay lip service to democracy when everything is going their way!)
On 14 November the government announced an immediate review of minimum wages for all farm workers as part of a deal with trade unions purportedly representing farm workers in the Western Cape , although only 6% were unionized at the beginning of the violent strikes. This will have dramatic implications for the agricultural sector. Government says a notice will be published announcing the cancellation of existing wage determination affecting all agricultural workers.
But, says TAU SA's president, "no worker is forced to stay with an employer. Workers must seek work where they can obtain the best salary". Further dismissals are on the cards if minimum wages are increased. "An employer who provides for R20 000 in his monthly salary budget is faced with an increase of 50% or 100%, then he could demand R5 000 for a ton of maize and R50 for a kilogram of tomatoes" says Mr. Meintjes. "These actions and counter-actions could lead to the destruction of the South African economy".
The staple food of farm workers, cultural origins aside, is maize. Between January 2011 and January this year, the price rose by 41,3% and 63,9%, depending on the quality. Some workers told journalists they cannot afford to buy food, but as their wages go up, food will increase again, and a spiral will continue to increase until inflation ravages the whole country.
TAU SA DEMANDS
In letters to the Minister of Police, TAU SA says there is a perception the police are afraid of a zero tolerance policy regarding criminal elements which have intimidated farm workers who want to work. Protestors have been bussed in from other areas to create havoc on farms and to put private property at risk. TAU SA has access to the Facebook page of Barry Stemmet, Western Cape Regional Secretary of the Food and Allied Workers' Union where he advertises that he is "on my way to Ceres - the farms are burning" and that "farmworkers are fed up with slavery", and that things "will be worse tomorrow". "We are not at the point of seeking agreements, too much work to do", he says on his page.
He sweeps up his fans who greet him with "I'm with you", "the struggle continues", "Is there a lot of damage", "strength to you - let them burn down the farms, these farmers are bad and they want to hold us hostage with ‘food security'". "Give the farmers hell, Barry" says another.
Other comments from Stemmet supporters include "Terreblanche fell from his horse, now the farmers will run away from our stones", "Fight the good fight, leader. We defeated them before "and "Amandla, Comrade Barry, long live the spirit of no surrender!" Politics is all over this Facebook page.
"If the police cannot get control of the situation, farmers are willing to help solve the problem" says TAU SA, but clearly the problem is now bigger than the question of farm wages - it has developed into a full-scale war to take the Cape from the official opposition. ANC head in the Western Cape Marius Fransman has joined the fray, and his vitriolic remarks about farmers are unprintable in an international bulletin. His hate speech remains undisciplined by the ANC.
Anarchy is on the horizon. It can spread like wildfire throughout the country. COSATU trade union Western Cape secretary Tony Ehrenreich is reported to have said that "there is already blood on the farmworkers, and unless it stops, there will be blood on the farmers of these farms".
The ANC's chickens have come home to roost. In a letter to the ANC, TAU SA says what is happening is the result of the ANC's policies: dissatisfaction with government promises not being met, no service delivery, the bloated bureaucracy receiving fat salaries with no commensurate input; the inflow of aliens from the rest of Africa who work for less than South Africans; seasonal workers who only work parts of the year; and the unwillingness of the police to take action because of the Marikana fiasco.
The real thorn in the flesh is the blatant and ostentatious profligacy of the ruling elite - luxury homes, lavish life styles, local commuting in Gulfstream jets; and the fraud, corruption and the uncaring and contemptuous manner in which the ANC ruling party treats its hard-working citizen.
"The 37 000 commercial farmers in South Africa are increasingly held responsible for the socio-economic problems in the country" says TAU SA. The government must sort out its own employment problems. "Salary is the price of labor, and the farmer is a price taker who has to be satisfied by whatever he is offered for his products", says TAU SA. Mechanization could be the answer, as it is in Australia and the United States and other developed countries.
We only have to look at Zimbabwe to see what chaos ensues when farmers are chased off their land. For 51 million people, this is a scenario too horrible to contemplate.
This article first appeared in TAU SA's International Bulletin
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