Labour is part and parcel of the inputs of the agriculture industry. It is the only input that cannot be donated. In our country, as in South Africa, it is however, plentiful, thus usually weakening its bargaining power besides also weakening management incentives to improve productivity.
Opinion by Tapiwa Nyandoro
It becomes a resource curse and not a nation’s competitive advantage if not handled properly. Labour needs to be brought into the economy as consumers so that domestic demand for manufactured goods, as opposed to poverty, increases with time and population growth.
In post independence Zimbabwe, as in South Africa, labour has a vote. For this reason some farm management in South Africa see a hidden hand in the current labour unrest in the Western Cape. They believe whoever orchestrated the first strike pin-pointed high value areas. As we saw in Zimbabwe at the beginning of the chaotic land restitution programme, triggered by the complete failure or collapse of the falsely labelled “home grown” Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, labour can have other options; even if they have to be forced upon it.
En masse farm labour started migrating illegally to South African farms where their work ethic and desperation, that made them accept low wages, made them welcome. The new landlords, who were thriftier with funds, thought they saw “a political angle”.
During my primary school days, back in the UDI days, I read, and re-read Bernard Chidzero’s Dzasukwa Mwana Asina Hembe. It hilariously narrated indigenous worker life on a tobacco farm. More like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, farms in those days were states within a state. They were self contained.
They had their own stores, bars, cemeteries and schools. They even had their own “laws”. The farmer, usually white, was the “benevolent” boss, and was usually a police or army reservist. Hard task masters, however, they nevertheless delivered wages and rations on time.
As was the case for the Pig in Animal Farm, a farm owner was more equal than other humans of a different colour. It is still largely the case in South Africa. The “benevolence” kept, (and keeps) the farms relatively peaceful, even during the Second Chimurenga War.
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The Western Cape Province is noted for its excellent orchards and vineyards. The latter produce good grapes, which in turn are made into export quality wine. The farms are largely white-owned while those who pick the fruits from the field are largely black. The government gazetted minimum daily wage for farm workers is R69, 41. The workers now want R150 per day.
The amount demanded by the workers is not unreasonable as are the reasons advanced. One of the workers, as quoted by the BBC says they used to get R45 in the 1970s (equating to $61 then) but now get R65 (equating to $7, 55). The desired R150 per day is equivalent to $17, 44, itself a far cry from the seventies wage! What could have gone so horribly wrong?
Well, the exchange rate then and now says and, or points to part, if not most of the story. In the mid-seventies 74 South African cents bought you a United States dollar now you need close to nine Rand. There has been some nominal increase in the wages of the poor workers but it has not matched inflation.
The silly monetary tool, much loved here during the lost decade ended 2010, of devalue and inflate, is most probably the culprit. It benefits the property and equity owners but not the poor. For the latter it erodes their wages. It poses a danger to infrastructure as replacement costs of any imported content balloon, whilst provision for depreciation and amortisation would, in the old days, become understated, encouraging non-cost recovery tariff regimes.
Worse, it hides static or poor productivity within the economy, leading eventually to uncompetitive industry on the export markets and subsequent current and trade accounts deficits, prompting high tariff barriers on the domestic market and more devaluation.
The vicious cycle leads to weaker governments, social strife, and in its severe form as in Zimbabwe’s, to reduced, and increasingly loss of sovereignty, as multilateral organisations, international donors and donor-funded NGOs gradually take over the de facto setting of national agendas and running of the country to prevent the State from degenerating into a total failed State, whilst enjoying filling the leadership vacuum that arises due to fatigue and leadership paralysis and burnout, leaving only self interest as the sole agenda for the ruling class. Just ask the Greeks for a recent example! What’s to be done then?
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