Labour Wrap: When a box of apples signals social tragedy

IN HIS latest Labour Wrap, Terry Bell notes that a large box of apples delivered to his door last week brought into sharp focus the extent of some of the avoidable difficulties the country now faces. The apples came from a small farm near Ceres where “the dams are dry, the land is cracked, and the trees are dying”.

Fruit had to be harvested in such quantities that it was just too much to market, so they were being gifted. There would be no new plantings and already 40 farmworkers had been laid off.

Bell says this made him angry and brought him close to tears, especially since only hours later came news that a Parliamentary committee had been informed that 50 000 Western Cape farmworkers were about to lose their jobs because of drought.

The economic and social consequences of this, he maintains, should be enough to make anyone weep – and be angry.

He claims that the potential for this tragedy was known about more than 20 years ago. As a journalist in July 1993, he had written what was then an established fact: that Cape Town would be running short of water although being built alongside one of the largest aquifers in the country, but which had become badly polluted largely by uncontrolled settlement.

This, he says, was at the start of a much greater influx of population and a knowledge of changing weather patterns. At the time there were also reports about possible solutions, even such as towing breakaway icebergs from Antarctica into Gordons Bay.

But successive administrations did nothing about it and the public remained generally unaware – and uninformed – about the extent of the problem and what might be done to avert future disaster. This was left to those who professed to be looking after the interests of the public. It underlines, he says, the importance of the flow of honest factual reporting; of the public being constantly aware.

An aware, fully informed public can, through its organisations - be they trade unions, religious institutions, human rights and other bodies - bring about change, a classic example, perhaps, being the halting of the notorious Secrecy Bill of 2013. It was passed by the ANC majority in parliament and awaited only the president's signature, but mass mobilisation halted it.

Had the Promotion of State Security Bill been in place today, it is unlikely we would know as much as we do about the incompetence, bungling and the extent of control exercised over state institutions by a gangster cabal. As a result, says Bell, support should be given to those media workers who continue to act as the responsible eyes and ears of the public. 

Armed with facts and having debated the way forward, organisation – mass mobilisation – could follow to perhaps bring about needed economic, social and political transformation.

* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.