Storm in South Africa over farm worker abuse allegations

A political storm has erupted in South Africa over allegations by Minister of Agriculture Lulu Xingwana that black farm workers are routinely ill-treated by white farm owners. Xingwana last year claimed that violence against women and children was rife in the sector,and that farmers inhumanely evicted workers.

The minister reportedly accused some farmers of raping women on their farms, abusing children, plundering workers' properties and she labelled them human rights abusers.

The major commercial farmers' unions challenged her to provide proof of her charges, which they said were bad for their businesses, especially coming from a top government official. They accuse the minister of populist posturing in preparation for the elections of 2009. The unions have in turn accused the government of not doing enough about the upsurge in the murders of commercial farmers in the last several years.

Emotions are so high over the allegations that the representatives of two leading commercial farmers' unions walked out of a recent meeting with Xingwana to resolve their differences. The minister claimed that the white farmers' unions where unhappy to meet her along with unions representing black farmers. The white farmers' unions protested that they wanted to meet with her to discuss issues particular to their differences with her rather than on general issues affecting all farmers. The matter has now been sent to the country's Human Rights Commission for arbitration.

Despite South Africa's peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994, land and agricultural issues represent important outstanding areas for reform to more meaningfully economically empower the generality of citizens.

For some the "willing buyer-willing seller" model of more equitable land distribution is slow and has little prospect of meaningful reform because of vast income disparities between sellers and prospective buyers. The present dominant landholders are often accused of inflating the value of the land, while they often protest that government valuations are unrealistically low.

A cautious African National Congress (ANC) government is unwilling to endanger productivity and scare foreign investors by land-reform that might be considered too radical, while at the same time aware of the building impatience for real change amongst the population that forms the backbone of its support. While its supporters accuse the government of not moving fast or radically enough on land and agricultural reform, some of its detractors in the commercial farming unions accuse it of aiding and abetting voices urging more aggressive action which the unions believe contribute to a growing climate of uncertainty and insecurity for them.