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Labour Wrap:
This week is a good time to look at government policies and some of the inadvertent and damaging consequences they can sometimes have, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap.
Bell points to the well intentioned visa regulations that have resulted in a slump in tourism.
But he adds that it is necessary to look back 20 years to the deregulation and liberalisation of trade. At the time government ministers swept aside criticism. However the labour movement warned that such policies would result in job losses and the reduction of productive capacity.
The trade unions were proved right, says Bell. And the best known example, is the textile and garment industry. But he adds that the agricultural sector was also a victim, although he and others did not pay adequate attention to the details as a “polarised situation” developed, especially about evictions from farms.
Now, he says, a report, sponsored by the International Labour Organisation and released last week, provides essential data about, and recommendations for, the severe problems faced by farmers and farm workers. Their futures, the authors conclude, are intertwined and have reached a “stalemate”: workers need more than R150 a day, but, in the present circumstances, farmers can’t afford this.
Authored by Margareet Visser of the University of Cape Town and Stuart Ferrer of the University of KZN, Bell says the report demolishes many of the preconceptions and prejudices about the farming sector.
And the remedies it suggests, he notes, provide hope that government will act in a sensible way to ensure food security and will not be swayed by electoral expediency. This is a danger because local government polls are looming and the governing party is concerned about waning support.
Perhaps, says Bell, government should learn the lesson provided by the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. He spent billions of his country’s oil revenues on importing subsidised food. This ensured electoral success, but crippled Venezuela’s farming sector.
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* Terry Bell is a political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.
