Off to the Farm

SOUTH AFRICA Off to the Farm

Woe to the Johannesburg native caught on the streets without a pass in June, for then is when Transvaal farmers direly need black labor to help harvest the maize. If he is lucky, the African will simply be arrested, taken to court and charged $3 for his "crime." But if he does not know the ropes, he will be held for the labor bureaus, where as an alternative to prosecution he gets a chance to sign a "voluntary" farmwork contract.

Each week hundreds of such hapless "volunteers" are packed into open trucks and, guarded by African "boss boys" with stout leather sjamboks (whips), shipped to distant farms for three or six months, often unable even to notify relatives or employers that they are leaving. South African police instituted the system in 1954, but its workings were not generally known, even in South Africa, until 33-year-old Johannesburg Lawyer Joel Carlson started a series of habeas corpus actions fortnight ago.

Carlson produced affidavits indicating that native workers are often brutally beaten by farm superintendents and that most of them live in hideous squalor. They get sacks to wear in the fields and are fed cold porridge, occasionally with scraps of meat. At night workers are herded into rude shacks to sleep on filthy gunny sacks spread on cement floors. In some cases workers who die on the job are buried, without reports being made either to a doctor or police. "Africans sent to the farms firmly believe they have been 'sold' to farmers," Carlson charged. "Police and labor officials in fact use the word thengisile--sold--when dealing with the 'volunteers.' "

The government admitted "there is no guarantee the volunteer will be given good treatment on the farms," but protested, "We are not responsible for his landing with a bad employer. There are bad employers everywhere." Minimum standards of rations and free medical care are urged, but, conceded the government, "these requirements cannot be enforced--they are merely suggestions to the farmer."

Officials argue that their system cleans the cities of vagrants, helps the harvest and saves the government money. Last week in Pretoria Supreme Court, Justice Quartus De Wet, after hearing arguments that the system has no basis in law, remarked sternly, "The court cannot countenance this procedure." Crusading Lawyer Carlson allowed himself a smile and a side remark: "At last we seem to be getting somewhere."

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