Causal de improcedencia hecha valer por los denunciados.

I now turn to the more central concern of the thesis, namely, the labour control regime on commercial farms. In doing so, I speak to the existence of a tension-riddled farm identity that speaks to commercial farms as a family (or community) and a profit-centre. Though this identity may not be prevalent universally, the existing literature indicates that it does have considerable resonance in the agricultural industry. A brief discussion of this identity underpins the identification of a particular kind of labour control system existing on capitalist farms.

The commercial farm regularly exists and operates as a site of economic production (i.e. work) and social reproduction (i.e. residence) and this spatially integrated work-residence nexus allows for forms of labour control which extend beyond work and the labour process. To work on a farm is not merely to be subject to an employment or labour relationship, as it also entails living on the farm and, for the farmer, entails obligations vis-à-vis the sphere of social reproduction of farm workers and importantly their families. In this context, at least in terms of farmer-driven discourses about the commercial farm, the farm is said to constitute a family or community and takes on this identity based on relationships of loyalty between farmer and workers (Farm Systems Management Series 1997). In employing a worker, the farmer is effectively (at least implicitly) employing the worker’s family or at least can call on family members to work on a temporary basis when necessary. Additionally, the farmer is

expected to provide for the basic social reproduction needs of the worker and family, for instance housing. Because of this setting, it becomes difficult for farm workers to make spatial demarcations between work and home as work-related issues (as indicated earlier) also relate to the site of social reproduction.

The portrayal though of the farm as a community involves a recognition only of the common interest and mutual dependence of owner and worker, and denies the reality of the antagonism and conflict between farmer and worker. In the end, particularly given the increasingly industrialized character of commercial farming, the primary goal (and abiding identity) – as indicated – of commercial farming is productivity and profit even if this means undermining the well-being of farm workers and their families. In fact, as shown above, commercial farms are notorious globally and historically for their low-wage regime and harsh working conditions and for workers and their families living on the very edge of any respectable and decent conditions of social reproduction (GRACE Communications Foundation 2013). Nevertheless, as I discuss below, the double identity of the commercial farm, as a loving family and brute profit-centre, leads to a distinctive type of labour control.

This is linked to the fact that commercial farms exist under private freehold title or tenure and are dispersed throughout large swathes of the countryside. The state tends to disclaim responsibility for these privatized rural spaces in terms of the provision of basic services and facilities, and traditionally farmers themselves have been held responsible for such provision. As a result, not only are commercial farms privately-owned spaces but they are also privately managed and regulated with minimal state intervention (as if farmers are substitutes for local state structures). As sites of economic production and social reproduction, the existence of this privatized (and ultimately personalized) space has facilitated the emergence of distinctive labour control regimes which speak to the double identity of ‘family’ and ‘profit’. The privatised character of authority in commercial agrarian spaces has been labelled as “domestic government” by Rutherford (2001) in his examination of commercial farms in Zimbabwe in the 1990s. He argues: “The government is ‘domestic’ in two senses: by officially promoting ‘the private’ over public domain – the rule of the farmer over that of state officials – and by administratively valuing paternalistic relations between … farmers and ‘their’ workers” (Rutherford 2001:14). The paternalism which Rutherford speaks to relates to the identity of the farm as a family, with farm workers seemingly belonging to the

farmer or farm. Of course, at the same time (as Rutherford recognises), the capitalist farm exists for profit-maximisation.

Farm relations between the owner or manager and the worker are described as ‘paternalistic’ or benevolent (Parry et al. 2005, Riley 2012) in the sense that the farmer takes on the role of a parent and the workers as children. As a parent, the farmer adopts a caring attitude toward the workers and the workers reciprocate in kind. This is expressed in a range of farm-based practices which go beyond the typical employment contract found elsewhere. For instance, the farmer may arrange for a worker’s pregnant wife to be taken to the nearest hospital late at night, and workers on their day off may fight fires which threaten the farmer’s homestead. This farmer-worker relationship also entails discipline when necessary (particularly to ensure profit-maximisation) and, hence, linked to paternalism is a despotic form of control (combining to form a despotic paternalism). This despotism borders on an autocratic style of management by the farmer owner and manager.

This despotic paternalism is made possible by the fact that capitalist farms are privatised agrarian spaces often unregulated (or inadequately regulated) by the state. The farms so to speak are private fiefdoms ruled as domestic spaces under the authority of the farm owner. Paternalism and despotism combine in shifting and uneven ways such that a range of hybrid forms of paternalistic despotism exist in practice. Certainly, organisations which monitor human rights abuses on capitalist farms tend to highlight the massive power differential which exists between owner and labourers and argue that brute discipline rules on commercial farms (Oxfam 2004, Coalition of Immokalee Farmworkers 2012). And direct farm owner control over both economic production and social reproduction may lead to a totalising form of domination bordering on unilateralism and coercion, along with a complacent and subservient workforce.

This is often manifested in the practices of farm owners in relation to farm worker mobilisation (Griffin, Kahn and Ickowitz 2002). Major difficulties arise in organising farm workers and for a variety of reasons, including the dispersal of work sites over vast agrarian terrains and the increasing prominence of (highly mobile) seasonal and casual labourers on farms (who are notoriously more difficult to organise than permanent workers). There are however examples of farm worker movements if not always in the form of a traditional trade union, such as the Coalition of Immokalee Farmworkers and its Anti-Slavery Campaign

(Coalition of Immokalee Farmworkers 2012). This membership-led farm worker organisation attempts to establish a sector-wide code of conduct in order to improve wages and working conditions for farm workers. But farm owners and managers are often hostile to such organisations, sometimes banning the presence of unions organising on their farms and any farm-based collective bargaining as this is seen as interfering with their privatised space; in so doing, they often claim that worker organisation is unnecessary as – in paternalistic language – the farmer looks after the labourers.

Domestic government or paternalistic despotism, but of a distinctively racialised kind, existed historically on South African commercial farms as the crucial labour control regime. This regime, as indicated, is privatised and also highly personalised given the character of the socio-space constituting commercial or capitalist farms. Management under domestic government involves simple hierarchies rather than complex management structures, and managerial decisions are often arbitrary rather than systematically ingrained in a more structured form of control system. For this thesis, the key question which arises is whether, under post-apartheid conditions, there has been a shift in the labour control regime on commercial farms in South Africa (to a more structured and impersonal regime) and, if so, it would be necessary to identify the underpinnings which mediate any such shift.