Employment relations between farm workers and their employers are in the spotlight following
violent farm worker protests in the Western Cape in November 2012 and the revision of the Sectoral
Determination 13: Farm Worker Sector in March 2013. The emergence of various (sometimes
controversial) studies and media reports on farm workers’ working and living conditions over the
past few years has deepened and broadened the discourse on the multiple and diverse challenges
facing agricultural producers, employers and workers. However, outdated assumptions and oversimplifications
continue to fuel unhealthy polarisation in the perceptions and views of key role
players and the public in general. This study seeks to highlight the ways in which the landscape has
changed and to provide a perspective that allows for a more systemic understanding of the drivers
that create the conditions for labour conflict.
Five desktop reviews were undertaken as part of Phase 1 of the research project. These reviews
focused on (a) the demographics of farm workers and farm dwellers; (b) the underlying economic
context that governs farm employment; (c) the regulatory framework that governs the relationship
and circumstances between farm workers, farm dwellers, employers and owners, labour brokers and
other contractors; (d) the socio-economic conditions of farm workers; and (e) the movement of
workers off-farm, including consideration of trends relating to tenure security of farm dwellers and
farm evictions. Chapter 1 provides a synthesis of these reviews, as well as analyses of (a) the
financial position of the farm sector, and (b) the working conditions of farm workers based on
findings of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) and regression analyses applied to the Labour
Market Dynamics in South Africa (LMDSA) data sets for 2011-2013.
According to the 2011 Census, 759 127 households with an aggregate population of 2 732 605
people (5.28% of South Africa’s population) lived in Farm areas1
of South Africa in 2011, of whom
592 298 households with a population of 2 078 723 people lived on farms. At least 91.2 per cent of
the Farm Area population was South African citizens, and at least 4.9 per cent was not. Excluding
employed people who earn no income (typically business owners and family members working in
those businesses) and those who did not specify their incomes, 65.1 per cent of employed Farm
dwellers earned R1 600 or less per month, and a further 17.2 per cent earned between R16 001 and
R3 200 per month in 2011. However, 2.5 per cent earned more than R25 600 per month. (Stats SA,
2013b).
According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) (Stats SA, 2014), 696 288 worked in
Agriculture, Hunting, Forestry and Fishing in South Africa in the third quarter of 2014. The list of
occupations of those people is diverse, and clearly not all people employed in that group of sectors
are farm workers. Two occupation categories that are farm-based, “Farmhands and labourers” and
“motorised farm and forestry plant operators”, respectively account for 65.7 per cent and 6.5 per
cent of the total. Seventy per cent of farmhands and labourers are employed in the growing of
crops, 22 per cent in farming of animals, and seven per cent in mixed farming operations.