Abstract
This study is focused on the historic farmworker uprising of 2012/13 in De Doorns town of the Western Cape, South Africa. Its principal concern is the issue of farmworkers’ voice and agency, how they self-organised, acted independently, and articulated demands. Farmworkers actively engaged in making demands based on their own interests. In this regard, I explore how farmworkers’ voices and agencies are shaped by multiple and interrelated processes.
To answer this and other related questions, this study relied on a qualitative research method that included in-depth interviews of ordinary farmworkers who braved the harsh backlash of the farm owners, and key trade union leaders, who, through various processes, became the negotiators with those in power. The key findings of this study relate to how farmworkers, as conscious agents, acted in the process of demand-making that could unify the broad range of voices and agency from young seasonal, casual workers (both women and men), as well as migrant workers and permanent farmworkers living on farms. Although the uprising was mostly spontaneous, the duration, geographical spread, and collective action of the different sections of farmworkers (casual, permanent, women and men) are indicative of the capacity of the most downtrodden layers in society to articulate their voice, challenge power, and give expression to their agency, thereby breaking the docile and subservient mode associated with farmworkers.
The uprising has to be seen as an outcome of smaller incremental struggles, shaping resistance and alliances that gives rise, at a certain moment, to a rupture. Through a framing that is capable of uniting diverse layers, the demand for R150 per day (8 USD per day) served as such an overarching framing. The wage demand became the central demand, not because it signified an economistic struggle; rather, it represented a transformative demand, which simultaneously could address the system of cheap labour, which for farmworkers embedded a system of domination and servitude. This demand also directly challenged the prevailing power relation between the State and commercial agriculture.
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Another important finding is that different social actors can go beyond their defined institutional limitations and play transformative roles. This certainly was the case of certain NGOs and independent unions that played key roles in the farmworkers’ uprising in ways to build and extend it so that the social relations pertaining to the living and working conditions in the agricultural system could be challenged and transformed.
Key words: Voice and agency; farmworker uprising, farmworker agency; monetary demands; farmworkers; farmworker trade unions.