Canaan Mdletshe

Canaan Mdletshe

"One farmer, one farm" - this is a key resolution taken at a two-day conference at which the plight of farmworkers and farm dwellers was discussed. It ended yesterday.

Delegates to the conference, held in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, included the Landless People's Movement, the Association for Rural Advancement (Afra) and other non-governmental organisations concerned with farmworkers' rights.

Afra's Sifiso Kunene said yesterday that the meeting had resolved to intensify the "one-farmer, one-farm" campaign.

The campaign is intended to protect the rights of people living and working on farms, he said.

"Despite legislation to deal with the rights of people living on farms, no significant redress or transformation has taken place.

"For this to be rectified, we believe that a farmer must not own more than one farm because that's where exploitation begins," said Kunene.

Delegates called for the scrapping of the legislation on land restoration because it failed to protect farmworkers and instead merely regulated the eviction of farm dwellers.