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Mentoring workers: White farmer makes a difference

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Picture: Lucky Nxumalo/City Press
Picture: Lucky Nxumalo/City Press

@City_Press

Farm worker Anthony Maseko (56) was born on Athole farm – as were his parents. Now, for the first time in his life, he lives in a brick house with electricity. And – also for the first time in his life – he does not live in fear of losing his job or being evicted.

It is not the only brick house being built in the agri-village on Athole farm, a 5 600 hectare spread of vegetable crops 10km outside the one-street Mpumalanga dorpie of Amsterdam.

Slowly but surely, the 60-odd farm workers and their families who live here are replacing their old mud houses with bricks and mortar homes. This is thanks to one farmer’s bold decision to set aside 10% of his land for labourers to use for farming.

Colin Forbes, who is also a physician, is mentoring workers in all aspects of farm management to help turn them into commercial farmers. This is often with help from the agricultural experts Forbes calls in.

The Athole farmers in training work on Forbes’ land on certain days and on their own for the remaining time.

Maseko, a tractor driver, is delighted with the material changes this arrangement has brought to his life.

“My children are very happy, particularly with having a TV. Now I think I will be able to pay for my daughter to study nursing next year, as I’ve been able to save money,” says the father of six.

Since the handover in 2011, Forbes’ workers have each earned about R8 000 in profits at the end of each harvest. This has been a welcome boost in a sector where the minimum wage is R2 400 a month.

Athole farm has passed down through generations of the Forbes family since the then Republic of Transvaal offered it to Forbes’ great-grandfather as payment for his work as a guide on a railway-construction project in the 1850s.

Forbes says he realised his continued success depended on his workers’ success. He hopes government will one day pay for the 10% of land that he has set aside. In the meantime, he continues to provide collateral for loans and initially pays for the seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and diesel his workers need. They repay him from their profits.

Forbes believes that the initiative should stand as a blueprint for land reform and that farmers should be compelled to transfer a portion of their land and pass on commercial farming skills to workers to help reverse the country’s skewed land-ownership legacy.

Obviously Forbes prefers this to having his land expropriated or being forced to give half of his land to workers under the so-called 50-50 system proposed by Gugile Nkwinti, the minister of rural development and land reform, in June last year.

“It’s way over the top, but giving nothing is way too little.

“Farmers can provide free mentoring to their workers because they have the credentials to do so. But someone holding a stick and saying a farmer must give away 50% of his land will polarise people,” says Forbes.

“Unfortunately, socialism doesn’t work in farming … there has to be one guy who will feel the pain when something goes wrong on the farm, so that’s why I’m saying mentoring is important,” he adds.

Forbes also mentors neighbouring farmer Patrick Madonsela (35), who farms mealies and soya beans with a further 120 families on 40ha of communal land in Glen Eland.

Madonsela says he is better off under Forbes’ mentorship than with the Mpumalanga agriculture department’s Masibuyele Emasimini (let’s go back to the fields) project, which is meant to assist emerging black farmers.

“The problem is that government only wants to put food in our mouths. They come here to plough and sow and then leave without teaching us anything. All we want is to learn how to farm,” he explains

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