I don’t mind anyone going on strike. I don’t care if workers demand more money or better working conditions and I don’t give a tuppenny toss if they get into angry negotiations with their bosses or the management team.
Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com
I do care if they start destroying property, damaging assets, killing security guards, driving managers off the land and killing a business that, for years, has managed to feed and clothe them. And take care of their families too.
And that’s exactly what happened in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape where a bunch of rampaging hooligans destroyed South Africa’s biggest team farm. Let me outline what happened.
Farmworkers at Magwa Tea outside Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape systematically destroyed and looted the farm before abandoning it. The tea farm had been producing 1,2-million kilograms of tea a season and had a turnover of about R65-million a year.
It employed 1 200 permanent workers and 2 300 seasonal workers.
So what sparked the outrage among workers and why, after years of working for a successful enterprise did they suddenly loot it, destroy it, hold the farm managers hostage and refuse to pick any more tea?
Well there were apparently a number of reasons for their outrage, but when the farm was closed down in February this year the existing farm workers were the highest-paid employees in the tea industry.
But greed was certainly one of the driving forces that stimulated their anger. Moreover, management’s refusal to grant them an increase of 104% made them furious even though their representative union, Fawu (the Farm Workers’ Union) agreed to a 7% nationwide wage increase for agricultural workers.
Magwa management told the workers at the farm that they could not authorise the increase but referred it to the Eastern Cape Development Corporation that effectively controls the tea company.
According to Pierre Leppan, a director of the corporation that has managed the farm for the past seven years, the new union representatives were confrontational from the moment they met with management and refused to accept anything less than the 104% increase workers wanted.
He says that the union officials thought that the farm managers operating the tea estate actually owned the farm and they demanded that a Magwa workers’ council election was delayed so that seasonal workers could vote to remove those with permanent jobs.
When their wage demands were officially refused, incensed workers cornered the farmer managers and held them in an office where they assaulted them. The violent strike at the tea estate went on for the next three months – even though it had been declared illegal – and managers who tried to keep the farm operating were shot at as they drove around the farm.
Their vehicles were vandalised, the farm homes were looted and burned and the tea bushes were abandoned as work ground to a halt.
The strike eventually ended when the Department of Agriculture offered the Magwa employees a financial package as an incentive to return to work and production soon returned to normal.
However, the workers remained in a rebellious frame of mind and this led to the suspension of various projects around the farm. Then in March this year workers again went on the rampage, this time destroying everything in sight including fridges, freezers, drying ovens and vehicles.
The farm managers were again attacked but this time with pangas as police descended on the farm and used tear gas and rubber bullets to dismiss the dissatisfied mob.
The permanent workers who lived in houses on the 13 different settlements scattered around the 1803-hectare farm – and who had refused to take part in the strike – were chased off the property.
Police confirmed that 48 workers were arrested for public violence and one person was arrested for murdering a security guard at the farm.
Fawu’s Tonga Mbaliese blames the farm’s management for the strike and insists that the initial problem was the tea-picking quota was unilaterally lifted from between 180 kg and 200 kg a day to 253 kg per person.
So what is the position now?
So what have the striking workers – and their union leaders – actually achieved?
Firstly everyone has lost their jobs and instead of earning something, they are now earning nothing. Secondly, the tea farm has been abandoned – at least this year – and the turnover of R65-million has been lost entirely.
The damaged vehicles, fridges, freezers and respective homes of the people displaced by this unruly mob will have to be replaced at some time in the future. And that will come at an enormous cost to the ECDC and, ultimately, will represent further wasted resources funded by the taxpayers.
And the workers?
They’ve got nothing – except perhaps the goods they might have stolen during the looting and sold to someone for a couple of hundred bucks.
I wish someone could explain to me – and to millions of other South Africans – exactly what the union representatives and their workers wanted to achieve by biting off the very hands that feed them?
Somehow that kind of reasoning never seems to enter the heads of the looting and rampaging louts who are prepared to attack farm managers with pangas because their wage demands have not been met.
Wage demands that are not only unreasonable but that fall way outside a nationally-negotiated settlement that was reached after fair and equitable basis with management.
It is this cycle of entitlement that suddenly seems to draw a veil across all reasoning and to cloud all sensibility. What do the workers expect? To be given their jobs back all over again so that they can run amok at some later stage?
Unions surely are there to bring a semblance of reason to the negotiation table and to treat any labour dispute with the dignity it deserves. Sure they might not like the offer or might want to bargain for better terms but that cannot include destroying the business, killing a security guard, looting the farm’s infrastructure, destroying managers’ and workers homes’ and burning vehicles.
Forget about the consequential losses of the lost turnover, the non-delivery on tea-buying contracts or the loss of faith among the buyers of farm crops. Those are all a consequence of these actions and have long-term effects.
What is the punishment that these workers and their leaders have received? So far there is nothing at all and, at best, the looting workers will be prosecuted for public violence and probably received a suspended sentence or a fine.
The murder accused might actually have to spend time behind bars but trying explaining that to his family and his dependants who counted on his security guard’s salary to feed and clothe them.
And the unions were clearly at the root of the savage bites that were inflicted on the farm’s management and destroyed a profitable enterprise.
And we call that freedom?
*Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at viaemail.
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