A review on the history of commercial farming in South Africa: implications for labour legislation
SOURCE: Ubuntu: Journal of Conflict and Social Transformation
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2015
TITLE AUTHOR(S): N.Kheswa
KEYWORDS: FARMERS, HISTORY, LABOUR MARKET, LEGISLATIIVE PROCESS, RACIAL SEGREGATION, UBUNTU
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 8825
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/1778
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/1778
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2015
TITLE AUTHOR(S): N.Kheswa
KEYWORDS: FARMERS, HISTORY, LABOUR MARKET, LEGISLATIIVE PROCESS, RACIAL SEGREGATION, UBUNTU
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 8825
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/1778
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/1778
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
The article draws on existing literature on commercial farming in the apartheid era in South Africa to give a history of commercial farming in the country and the labour relations that arose from a racially-based and largely coercive labour market. Commercial agriculture in South Africa was historically state-subsidised and heavily state-regulated, thus ensuring the success of commercial farming in an otherwise futile industry. Indeed, the commercial farming industry was orchestrated and manipulated by state interventions which served to favour (predominantly White) commercial farmers to the neglect of their black workers. The nuances in the apartheid-driven regulations present unique labour relations between farmer and farm worker, referred to as 'paternalism'. The highly privatised farming spaces also strengthen this relationship, however to view this connection in a negative light is a one-sided and reduced ideology. There are indeed some benefits which can be identified from the connection, which present what is referred to as a 'micro-welfare state'. In this relationship that shapes the communities that existed on farms during the apartheid regime, one can identify better-off conditions (for farm workers) nested in the notion of 'paternalism'. This paper is drawn from the author's Master of Arts in Industrial Sociology thesis titled Changes and Continuities in the Labour Process on Commercial Farms in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Studies from Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal Provinces which would not have been possible without the generous funding from the South Africa Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD) and the Rhodes University Levenstein Bursary award.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Municipal commonage administration in the Northern Cape: can municipalities promote emergent farming?
- Market access for small-scale farmers in South Africa
- Municipal commonage administration: can the new-look municipalities promote emergent farming?
- Book review: Stiff, P. (2002) See you in November: the story of an SAS assassin. Johannesburg: Galago Publications. 312 p. ISBN 1919854053 and Stiff, P. (2001) Warfare by other means: South African in the 1980s and 1990s. Johannesburg: Galago Publications. 600 p. ISBN 1919854010
- How a smallholder farmer entered and remained in the export market for thirty years
- Visit to Italy for the purpose of attending 18th Symposium of the International Farming Systems Association at the Salesianum, Rome
- The socioeconomics of subsistence farmers
- The socioeconomics of subsistence farmers and the contribution of the social sciences to agricultural development
- Can land and agrarian reform in South Africa create opportunities for smallholder farmers and help reduce rural poverty?
- Small-scale agriculture, employment and an all-inclusive rural economy
- Factors influencing the use of alternative land cultivation technologies in Swaziland: implications for smallholder farming on customary Swazi nation land
- How do small farm households benefit from ICT access and use?
- The gendered dimensions of farming systems and rural farmer households in the context of food security: a pilot study of small-scale livestock farmers in Marble Hall and Rhenosterkop
- What factors determine household food security among smallholder farmers?: insights from Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
- Globalisation and the world of work
- Changes in the South African education system: in search for economic growth
- Understanding the size of the problem: the national skills development strategy and enterprise training in South Africa
- Income mobility and household dynamics in South Africa: the case of KwaZulu-Natal
- The socio-economic characteristics of the North West labour market
- A typological of the unemployment: a policy-orientated approach