Cape Town - A joint delegation of the portfolio committee on agriculture and the portfolio committee on employment wrapped up their three-day visit of Western Cape farms with a call to farmers in the province to stop the employment of undocumented foreigners.
In March this year inspectors from the Department of Employment and Labour, along with officials from Home Affairs Immigration Services and police, met agricultural employers in Robertson to discuss the alleged employment of suspected illegal foreigners on local farms.
This was after tensions between farmworkers spilt into the streets of Robertson’s Nkqubela township following fights between Lesotho and Zimbabwean nationals over scarce job opportunities in the area.
Agriculture portfolio committee chairperson Zwelivelile Mandela (ANC) urged farmworkers and farm owners to prevent labour brokers from bringing in undocumented foreigners to work on the farms at the expense of South Africans.
“We cannot allow this to continue at the expense of the 66% of unemployed youth in South Africa, these jobs have to be protected and reserved for our people.”
The committee was accompanied to the farms in Goedemoed by officers from the Labour Department, who confiscated the expired passports and visas of 11 foreigners and handed them to the Department of Home Affairs for further action.
At Marlenique Farm the joint committee was told that 23 families who live on the farm had received eviction notices.
Blocked by the farm owner from entering the farm, Mandela said the committee would speak to the Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development Minister, Thoko Dididza, on the issue of illegal evictions and to stop the evictions.
In De Doorns on Friday the joint committee met members of the Ubuntu Rural Women and Youth Movement NGO on the progress made in terms of land tenure security, safety and labour relations in farming communities.
The NGO said farm dwellers were still living in inhuman conditions on the farms in the area, 19 years after the SA Human Right Commission published a report on the issue.
The Women on Farms Project made a presentation to the joint committee in which they said that gender-based-violence is common on the farms.
The joint committee visited four farms in the West Coast and Cape Winelands districts where they also held public hearings that were used by farmworkers and farm dwellers to highlight the conditions under which they live on the farms.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za