Farm workers and the ‘Agrarian question’

Abstract

The poorest, most insecure and the least visible of South Africa's black workers are those who live and work on its white‐owned farms. They have been oddly peripheral to the current land debate, partly due to the technocratic nature of the discourse of ‘development’ which has foreclosed consideration of the irreducibly political nature of local power relations. Farms are not mere units of production: they are structured by paternalist discourses — practices that weave power relations into the very fabric of social identity and daily life. Legal reform creates a space for contesting these power relations. This article explores some of the issues they face and tries to link these to larger questions of transformation.