‘Forgotten citizens’: South Africa’s farm workers threatened with eviction
Al Jazeera
Farm workers and dwellers with historical links to the land have worked for generations but have seen nothing in return.
New Hanover, South Africa – Three generations of Mini Myeza’s family have lived on Oakville pine tree farm in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Now the 58-year-old widow may be evicted from the land where she was born.
“My family has lived here on this farm for generations, long before the farm was built,” Myeza told Al Jazeera on the plantation in New Hanover, about 40km from the city of Pietermaritzburg.
She relayed the story her late father told her: under apartheid rule, the ancestral lands belonging to their family and a neighbouring Black family were seized by white farmers and combined to create the 269-hectare (665-acre) pine plantation farm.
Those living on the land remained, but all the Black men were forced to work on the farm for poverty wages and often no pay at all. No one was compensated for the land that was seized.
“Those of us who live on the farms don’t know the meaning of freedom and human rights because our rights are violated on a regular basis,” Myeza lamented.
