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Zim farmworkers treated like slaves
Tawanda Mashingaidze, The Pretoria News (SA)
December 01, 2005

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=13317

The "rampant abuse and inhuman treatment of commercial farm-workers" are widespread in the coffee and tea growing region of Chipinge, where Zimbabwe war veterans and senior government officials have seized farms. According to a report by the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers' Union of Zimbabwe, (Gapwuz) farmworkers in the area are being subjected to "practices synonymous with slavery". Some have been forced at gunpoint to work in the plantations; only a few are being paid and then only a pittance. According to Gapwuz secretary general Gertrude Hambira, some of the worst offences have taken place on Redsands Farm, which is owned by senior members of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). The farm has been declared a no-go area for union officials and has been put under

24-hour guard by members of the CIO. Union investigators who managed to interview some of the workers report that a dawn-to-dusk curfew is in place and that workers are often expected to work 12 hours per day without a break. One worker who escaped from the farm claimed he had been tortured by members of the CIO after complaining of unbearable working conditions. All of those interviewed reported not being paid. The same tale was being told at the Ashante Estate. This estate was taken over by a group of veterans of the independence war who have subdivided it into seven plots. The war vets told the workers that they had spent years making the former colonial owners rich and therefore had a responsibility to work for free for those who had liberated the country. Several workers disagreed and were apparently beaten for it.

The Gapwuz report says severe beatings seem commonplace on these farms. And in the anarchy that exists, different groups of war vets compete for the same labour, often beating workers who have been forced to labour on another plot. "This is a return to the days of Chibharo in the 1920s, when our people were forced by the settlers to work the fields for free," says Hambira. Most of the workers are also expected to provide their own implements to till the soil. According to the workers, many of the new farm-owners know little or nothing about farming and most have no equipment. "So they provide their own implements and then have to work without pay. "Something must be done," said Hambira. Complaints have been lodged with the government, which has so far not responded. But the government has pointed out in the past that there is a stipulated minimum wage for farm workers. With soaring inflation, this is now worth less than R35 a month. Several of the new farmers claim they are paying the equivalent of this wage or even more - but in accommodation and food rather than cash. Union investigators also found some farmers who were paying their workers something. But this was often as little as the equivalent of R10 a month. "This third liberation war has not freed the land. It has put us under new oppression." This was a common refrain from workers reported by the union investigators.

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