[SANET-MG] the new slavery

[jcummins <jcummins@UWO.CA>]

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GFTNSL.phpISIS Press Release 14/12/05
Global Food Trade & the New Slave Labour
How globalisation links UK’s Tesco supermarket chain to colonial-style 
farming in South Africa that exploits farm-workers especially women and 
perpetrates poverty. Samantha Burcher

A fully referenced version of this paper is posted on ISIS members’ 
website. Details here

Colonial farmers call the shots
Fatima Shabodien is executive director of Women on Farms Project. She 
came to London’s City Hall on a foggy day to describe the impact of 
trade, the export of food, and the changes on South African farmlands 
over the past ten years. When people think of South African farms they 
think of subsistence farming, she said. But the reality is predominantly 
commercial farming, colonial farms owned by white males and leased to a 
pool of black workers [1].

There are new laws in a democratic South Africa for working in 
agriculture. But before 1994, no laws existed to protect relationships 
between farmers and farm workers. Despite this, women are forced into 
feudal labour practices by implication. When a white farmer contracts a 
male labourer, his wife or girlfriend is expected to work for the farmer 
too. A farmwoman is paid less for her work than men and discriminated 
against as to the sort of work she can do. She is further bound to her 
man because on-farm housing is tied to labour; therefore women can only 
be housed if they work. No housing contracts are given to farmwomen on 
commercial farms.

WTO encourages unequal trade
Since the WTO introduced subsidies for farmers, things have become even 
worse for both male and female workers. Farmers have drastically cut 
back on agricultural employment and even forcibly evicted workers to 
avoid giving them tenure rights to land. What were once permanent jobs 
have now become seasonal, and these precarious positions mainly occupied 
by women (see Box). Because the jobs are casual, there are no provisions 
for benefits such as maternity pay and sick leave, nor protective 
clothing from pesticides as there would have been under the usual 
employment contracts.

South Africa’s commercial agriculture is export oriented, and is fragile 
as it is open to challenges from the global market and the progressive 
removal of trade barriers and subsidies. Increased competition and 
unfair terms of trade with highly subsidised producers in the North, 
along with other factors such as drought, exacerbate poor pay and 
working conditions, leading to poor health for farm workers.

Unequal trade regimes reinforce inequality for women and for emerging 
black farmers who are unable to compete with white farmers on economic 
terms.

Wages paid in wine
Western Cape farmers pay labourers in part or in full with alcohol. This 
is known as the “tot system”, a common practice left over from slavery. 
A steady stream of alcohol is given to the workers throughout the day. 
Not too much to make them drunk, but enough to make them dependent. 
There is a legacy of alcoholism and violence around colonial style 
farming. Farmwomen are encouraged to drink throughout their pregnancies, 
and the wine regions of the Western Cape has the highest incidence of 
foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). There is no concept of leisure for farm 
workers, so alcohol also serves a recreational purpose. This puts 
farmwomen and their children in high- risk situations from violence and 
HIV/AIDS.

One widow’s story
Gertruida Baartman is a widow with four children and an extended family 
to support. She works for six months of the year on a fruit-exporting 
farm in the Ceres district in the Western Cape region of South Africa. 
She picks, prunes and packs apples for Tesco’s supermarkets in the UK 
for £3.90 a day. It’s a struggle for her to feed the family, to pay for 
school fees, books and uniforms. Her family subsist on a bread and 
potato diet.

“Gertruida is ashamed of her struggle, her dignity is gone,” said 
Fatima, “and she cannot make direct eye contact with people.” Her work 
is fairly isolated so she experiences none of the camaraderie or 
solidarity of factory workers, or a union. In her mind, she has failed 
her family.

According to the National Union of Farmers of Canada, rural women 
comprise one quarter of the world’s population [2]. And in some parts of 
Africa, women head 60 percent of households, where they meet almost all 
of the water and fuel needs and process all of the family’s foodstuffs.

Actionaid sent a team of investigators to the Western Cape to audit 
Tesco’s fruit farms. (See Rotten Fruit. Tesco profits as women workers 
pay a high price 
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/wps/content/documents/tesco_southafrica.pdf). 
Together with Women on Farms Project, they focussed on the conditions of 
the seasonal women packers, and were shocked by the violations against 
these workers which include lower than the minimum wage (and men’s 
wages), dismal housing, job insecurity, food insecurity, and no benefits 
such as paid maternity and sick leave.

No protection against pesticides
Conditions on colonial farms are generally poor and the standard is 
worse for women. When farm inspectors are due to call, the portable 
toilets are put in the fields and overalls, gloves and shoes are given 
to the women. As soon as the inspectors are gone, the vestments and 
toilets are taken away again.

Women workers claim they were given no protection against pesticide 
spraying and told to pick fruit from trees still wet with chemicals. 
Tesco refutes the claim by saying that the women Actionaid interviewed 
were confused. They deny that those women worked for farms exporting to 
Tesco. And as far as pesticides are concerned, women workers were 
picking apples sprayed with water.

Women on Farms Project have defended the women taking part in 
Actionaid’s audit, by saying that they may not have a sophisticated 
world view, but they know what water is and are fully aware that their 
apples are put into boxes clearly marked Tesco! While Fatima was in 
London she visited Tesco supermarkets to photograph the green Cape 
apples on the shelves, so the farmwomen in South Africa can see whom 
they work for, and what Tesco is.

What farmwomen want
What Women on Farms Project want is for Tesco to be honest about their 
dealings with the farmwomen. The farmwomen don’t want a boycott of 
Tesco, they need to hold onto their jobs. They are scared that if they 
push too much for their rights, they will lose a valuable export 
contract. So despite the harsh conditions, the inequalities, and the 
deceptions, women on South African farms want what women all over the 
world want, and that is to provide for their families.

Women on Farms Project are helping women in rural areas to build their 
capacity to claim their rights and fulfil their needs. But there are 
obstacles to organisation at even very basic levels because of 
patriarchal codes. Although unionisation in agriculture has been legal 
since 1993, farm workers are the least organised labour sector with the 
lowest percentage of unionised workers.

There are good post-apartheid national laws designed to protect all farm 
labourers, but they were founded on a corporate model of labour that 
never filtered down to farmwoman or migrant worker level. Nevertheless, 
Fatima’s project has successfully established a member- based 
organisation for farmwomen (also open to men) to build collective 
solidarity. It has 3 000 members and was publicly launched on National 
Women’s Day (South Africa) this year.

Another strategy for alleviating exploitative trade regimes might be for 
South African farmwomen organisations to partner with other labourers 
organisations involved in fruit and wine exporting countries in the 
south, such as Chile.

Tesco supports the Ethical Trading Initiative baseline code, but 
tactical buying practices like “just-in-time” orders that create last 
minute price wars between suppliers have encouraged farmers to further 
exploit workers by shunting the costs and risks onto them. However, as 
Fatima points out, there is no evidence to suggest that workers would 
receive any better treatment without these economic pressures.

Thus, farmwomen are at the mercy of Tesco, whose directors they say, 
“must ensure that they take account of the likely consequences of any 
decisions on the interests of employees, suppliers, communities and the 
environment” in the workings of foreign direct investment. And if they 
don’t, then it becomes the duty of governments, in the interests of 
global democracy, to regulate the behaviour of the transnational 
corporations to provide decent working and living standards for 
hardworking women.

Box

UN reports less stable jobs for women

According to the UN Development Fund For Women (UNIFEM) report, Progress 
of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty, in developing 
countries informal labour accounts for 50-80 percent of all 
non-agricultural employment, and when agricultural workers are added in 
the figure is even greater. Women who receive a pittance for insecure 
employment predominantly populate this informal workforce. Cases are 
reported of women working 18 hours a day for wages that are insufficient 
to feed their families. The report links poverty with gender inequality 
and unless attention is paid to strengthening women’s economic security, 
poverty cannot be eradicated [3].

The UN Charter for Global Democracy, 12 Areas for Urgent Action, further 
highlights the regulation of corporations in the workplace. Point 2 
states that transnationals must “adhere to an international code of 
conduct covering agreed principles concerning human rights, the 
environment and core labour standards.”

Via Campesina, an international peasants group, supports rural women, 
and gender parity, and have called for the removal of agriculture 
negotiations from the WTO [4].




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