Western Cape - The general strike by workers in the province’s agricultural sector has been called off indefinitely, Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich announced during a rally in De Doorns on Tuesday.
The decision and the premise on which it was made was welcomed by farmers approached by the Cape Argus.
Workers would be encouraged to unionise or to organise into collective bargaining bodies and to negotiate directly with their employers.
This echoed the sentiments of Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies who addressed workers in De Doorns 24 hours before Cosatu’s announcement.
“The demand for a R150-a-day living wage remains unchanged,” Ehrenreich said, adding that a demand for farmworkers to have a share in the profits of the export harvest had been added.
“Workers will negotiate with their employers. We trust that agreements on farms could be reached through such a process.”
Ehrenreich said strikes would resume on individual farms where agreements were not reached by January 9 next year.
This would coincide directly with “one of the most critical periods in the harvesting process, ensuring that farmers are under maximum pressure to reach an agreement with their workers before then”.
Unions, particularly Cosatu affiliate the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) and the independent Building and Allied Workers Union of SA (Bawusa), have been signing up new members since the strike began four weeks ago.
But, in Fawu Western Cape chairman Timothy Ncwana’s words, the competition between the unions was distracting from the process of publicising workers’ grievances while the strike was still ongoing.
Unions will now have carte blanche to recruit members.
“But, workers rights will always be protected by Cosatu – whether they are members of a union or not. Cosatu commits to staying abreast of negotiations that will be ongoing, and will take steps to ensure that there is no abuse of workers in these negotiations,” Ehrenreich said.
Anton Rabe, spokesman for Agri SA, welcomed the announcement.
“From the beginning we have accepted that there are challenges in our industry. But throughout we have called for proper processes to be put in place to address these.
“This is a welcome step in the right direction. I have remained an optimist from day one that we would end this process better than we started it,” he said, referring to the start of the strike on November 5 when vineyards in De Doorns were torched and shops looted.
However, farmworker Monwabisi Kondile said he was unhappy because Cosatu had been “playing football with the workers”.
He said at one moment they said they should strike and the next that they should not.
The strikes due to resume on Tuesday had different levels of support in the province.
In Ceres, Pieter du Toit of the Du Toit Group estimated that close to 100 percent of the workforce had gone to work on Tuesday.
In De Doorns, while many workers supported the stayaway, many went to work.
In these two areas the strike went ahead with few reports of intimidation and violence.
By late on Tuesday, there was a tense stand-off between police and farmworkers in Rawsonville.
Farmworkers allege that police opened fire with rubber bullets at a taxi rank at about 3pm.
The workers had returned from a march, organised by the Farmworkers Coalition, during which a memorandum was handed over to the offices of Agri Wes Cape – which represents farmers’ interests – and the Department of Labour in Paarl.
“The workers who left Paarl were in a good mood. The workers that are here are angry and tense,” said Colette Solomon, acting director of Women on Farms who was on the scene.
She slammed the police for “inciting tension rather than defusing it”.
But the police said they were attacked by stone-throwers before firing rubber bullets.
In Montagu, two activists with Mawubuye Land Rights and three workers were arrested during a march, said Gavin Joachims, a colleague of the activists.
Provincial police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Andrè Traut said seven people had been arrested for possession of an unlicensed firearm on the N1 outside Worcester.
A .308 Mauser and 60 rounds of ammunition had been found in a vehicle and no one could produce a valid licence for their possession, Traut said.
The suspects, aged between 33 and 66, were due in court once they had been charged, he said.
Meanwhile, Franschhoek police confirmed that about 500 farmworkers took to the streets in the Groendal area on Tuesday, burning tyres and causing havoc on the town’s roads.
Constable Marize Papier said the protesters were kept off the farms, and that no farms had been damaged.
“At the moment everything is under control, it’s all quiet now.
“There were about 500 workers and no one went on the farms and no one demolished any property,” Papier said.
About 30 police officers had been deployed to the scene.
Traut said a number of people were arrested for public violence.
“I can’t give an exact number yet, but about 15 people were arrested and there were a number of people injured,” he added.
Cape Argus