Book Reviews 111
"surround" Africa with fibre-optic cable - an issue which has given rise to a great
deal of debate: the "pro" (not mentioned in this Briefing) being that this would give
Mricaaccess to telephones and significantly decrease that proportion of humanity
which has never made a call. One thing which is not quite made clear in the Briefing
is the difference between the Net (or the Web) and Email: throughout the repon
Email is sometimes mentioned, sometimes the Internet, without adequately
distinguishing between the two, even at the end of the Briefing under "your
Internet guide." Even SARDC in its own review of the Briefmg does not clarify
this distinction for the lay person.
Ultimately it will be the policy-makers' will or resistance to technology which
will make it more widely available. The Internet is there, it has only to be made
accessible. Governments can facilitate the spread of information, as in Zimbabwe's
AIDS education campaign, or it can obstruct, as in the issue of cellular
phones. Part of the problem is the phenomenon widely observed in Africa of the
higher echelons of management, those who make the policy decisions, being the
least familiar with the technology - often to the extent of being resistant to iL If
development is conditional on transforming the economy to a "knowledge-based"
one, as in the OECD countries, then such factors will hold Africa back, and the
Internet will be no Superhighway but will remain a plaything of the elite academic
class.
Reviewed by Anne Derges. School of Social Work. P Bag 66022. Kopje. Harare.
In Search of Hope for Zimbabwe's Farm Workers, Dcde Esi Amanor- Wilks &
Contributors, Dateline Southern Africa and Panos, London 1995, 70 pp.
"Management only bothers with us when they want something done or
when we make noise over something. They do not care less how we survi ve."
Amanor-Wilks and contributors chronicle the lives of farm workers living and
working on Zimbabwe's mostly white-owned commercial farms and the unacceptable
conditions they continue to endure. The wri ters' honest pcns outl ine the di sm at
lives of about 1.8 million commercial farm workers and their children who provide
cheap labour to 4,500 white commercial farmers who own and control 12 million
hectares or 70% of Zimbabwe's land.
The book relates the hardships farm labourers experienced during the era of
colonial rule, moves through their hopes and aspirations for a better life in the
liberation struggle and independence phase until the prescnt time. Nine main
chapters of text broken with boxes of oral testimony which give voice to fann
workers, present research based on past and currcntlegal provisions. the political
situation and historical background to show how farm labourers experience life.
112 Book Reviews
The haunting image of the white master who drives a Mercedes Benz and practices
rifle discipline reflects the master-servant relationship between farmers and
workers, illuminating a slavelike existence for workers.
The book points out that the power commercial farmers wield is based on how
produce grown on their sprawling hundred-acre farms makes an importantcontribution
to Zimbabwe's agricultural based economy. This translates into an inequality
in access to land ownership and control for workers and the spiral effect. as one
farm worker interviewed states, " ...we are the drivingforce behind thefirm. but we
get peanuts. We are paid a pittance."
The opening chapter, Relations Between Farm Owners and Workers displays
the 1990s, characterised by land designation and economic deregulation, as a
decade which has pushed farm workers into a deeper abyss of job uncertainty,
poverty and distress. This theme reemerges in chapter eight called Farm Workers
and the Global Economy, examining how regional and world market forces have
worsened the working and living conditions of farm workers.
Chapter two picks up a point made earlier, "The working conditions offarm
workers have never been a leading topic on the political agenda," and examines
the Wages and Working Conditions for farm workers. Looking at the pay cheques
workers take home and how these meagre incomes are useless in relation to the
current cost of living, what comes out here is a stark reality of the desperate
conditions farm labourers work and live in.
Anderson's voice brings chapter three Amenities and Environmental Health to
life. "Some doesn't see his value," says the farm worker, "hejust lives like a mombe
(cow). He works and eats and sleeps. They just want us to be down down down,
until we die."
For many workers malnutrition, poverty, lack of education and health facilities
are the natural order of the day. The life of female workers is captured in Female
Workers. Wives and Daughters. which shows how women on farms, who are
mostly wives of permanent or casual labourers there, are seldom seen as workers
in their own right and are often asked to trade in sexual favours for employment.
For most women, life on commercial farms is an ugl y web of prostitution, AIDS,
punishment for getting pregnant. beer brewing, no education, with widows,
especially migrants the most insecure, because they can be thrown out onto the
streets once their husbands die, to a life of begging or destitution in cities and towns.
Although the most hard-working group, women earn much less than male workers,
and under prevailing economic conditions seem likely to be replaced by men as
casual labour.
As mothers, women workers can only spend limited hours away from their
homes and family and must do farm work by day and house work by night. leaving
them with little time to themselves.
In chapter five the growing problem of Child Labour and children living on
commercial farms which needs urgent attention, comes to the fore. Children born
Book Reviews ] ]3
and growing up on commercial farms do piece jobs and more serious work during
peak season. They do not have schools, have limited career prospects as unskilled
farm and domestic workers and are caught in a trap of malnutrition, disease,
hunger, poverty and most recently, AIDS.
Chapter six says little attention has been paid to lack of Education for Farm
Workers and as a result the large majority of workers, except maybe the younger
ones, cannot read and write. High levels of illiteracy among farm worker communities
mean many do not know or understand the kind of rights that exist for them
and generally feel they cannot fight for any rights. High fees coupled with the costs
of examination fees, uniforms, books and stationary, transport, plus cultural
preferences for boys means secondary schools are out of reach for most farm
children, especially for girls.
Chapter seven explores the lives of the large population of Migrant Workers on
commercial farms who originally came from neighbouring Malawi and Mozambique
as refugees in search of work. Although many migrants have been integrated
into local communities, they do not have Zimbabwean citizenship and as such do
not qualify for social or medical assistance. Retired migrants, who are now at the
end of their working life pose a growing problem on commercial farms which is
yet to be addressed. Single aged migrants, especially women are at the mercy of
individual farmers and can easily be thrown off farms, becoming homeless,
stateless and destitute.
The conclusions offered in chapter nine show that while the past century has
created impressive wealth for commercial farmers, the ugly side to the agricultural
success story is shown in how ]5 years after independence farm workers are still
invisible from Zimbabwe's social and political structures
The book notes that, "conditions offarm workers today reflects a hugefailure
of policy and a distressing willingness of all but a few groups involved in the
development of activities in Zimbabwe to turn a blind eye to their plight ...The
voices of Zimbabwe ,sfarm workers heard in this study need to be given aplatform
to influence groups such as donors and to translate individual voices into practical
programmes."
The final section of the book lists seven recommendations and actions for
various sectors of society to take up.
]n the current climate ofIand debate and redistribution, this book clearly has an
activist agenda.1t is a must-read for all those who wantto push for change and bring
true hope to the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who live and
work on Zimbabwe's commercial farms.
And as the book points out, "It is not just Zimbabwe's image abroad that is at
stake but the lives of more than one million people caught in a terrible trap of
labour uncertainty, illiteracy, ill health and immeasurable poverty."
Reviewed by Isabella Matambanadzo, Freelance Journalist. Acknowledgement to
Woman Plus, Vol I,No I, 1996. Zimbabwe Womens' Resource Centre &Network.
POBox 2192, Harare, where this review was first published.