Paternalism and Law: The micropolitics of farm workers’ evictions and rural activism in the Western Cape of South Africa
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Date
2008Author
Nolan, Pauline J
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis deals with the micro-politics of farm workers’ evictions. It documents farm
workers’ narratives of the processes of eviction and displacement from farms in the
Western Cape of South Africa. It analyses farm relations and their relationship with law,
through the eyes of farm workers and through the legal actors who assist them with
representation and by lobbying on their behalf. In particular, it focuses on the Extension
of Security of Tenure Act (62) of 1997, which was implemented to protect farm workers
from the large scale evictions that were taking place on farms and as part of a broader
land reform programme.
Drawing particularly on the work of Andries Du Toit, who has written about paternalism
on Western Cape Farms (eg. 1998) and more recently on the impact of policy (2002), and
on Blair Rutherford’s arguments relating to farm workers’ organisation in Zimbabwe, I
argue that (neo)paternalistic sociality on farms is constantly being renegotiated in spite of
and because of new laws, and through involvement of other influences such as locally
based paralegals. The core of my argument is that farm workers are ‘liminal’ in this
moment, particularly in the negotiation of eviction and housing tenure, as they operate
both within the limits of paternalism where they can, and increasingly through ‘access to
justice’ and related concepts. The boundaries of these discourses and social spaces are
constantly shifting back and forth as farm dwellers are influenced by worker organisation
as espoused by NGOs, and by increased interaction and understanding with and of laws
that protect them; at the same time as they are influenced by their relationships with farm
owners and other farm workers, or by paternalism.
The anthropological fieldwork upon which the thesis is based was multi-sited, conducted
between February 2002 and September 2003. The thesis follows the work of NGOs and
paralegals, and the life histories and recent legal experiences of farm workers. The
importance of the interaction between farm workers with law and its interlocutors should
not be underestimated even in a context where laws such as ESTA in fact offer limited
protection to farm workers’ security of tenure. These interactions must be understood in
the contexts of continuing but ever renegotiated forms of gendered and racialized
paternalism, of a changing economic, legal and political landscape. The thesis is therefore concerned with these spheres of influences and the micro-dynamics of legal and political
contestation in the rural Western Cape.