GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament
22 May 2025
In the soft light of early mornings and evenings in the Boland, tens of thousands of Western Cape farmworkers make their way to and from work on the back of large trucks. Whereas, in the past, many farmworkers lived on farms, these days the overwhelming majority live in informal settlements outside rural towns, working as seasonal workers.
There are more regulations governing the transportation of pigs than farmworkers.
Both pigs and farmworkers must be conveyed on vehicles with rails of sufficient height to prevent their plummeting from the vehicle, but that’s where the similarities end. Pigs must be transported on trucks with a non-slip floor, protected from exhaust fumes and direct sun. Depending on the type of hog, there are also strict square meterage regulations to control density. There are no regulations on density, direct sun, exhaust fumes or non-slip floors governing the transportation of farmworkers on large trucks. (Carrying more than five workers on bakkies and small trucks of less than 3500kg is prohibited, though you wouldn’t say so judging from the traffic.)
Every so often, one of these trucks crashes, with the anticipated loss of life, injury and human suffering – and the Western Cape Government’s PR machinery cranks into life. It is noticeable that for the past several years the MEC for Agriculture’s standard response has been to shift responsibility to the National Transport Minister, to whom you have apparently written to request changes to the traffic regulations. What’s the point in having a provincial MEC for Agriculture without any powers to regulate agriculture?
About 18 months ago, I heard the MEC on Cape Talk Radio following another fatal truck crash. There were 70 workers on the back of the truck; three died and just about everyone else was injured. The MEC promised to speak to his colleague, the Minister of Mobility, “to stop every single truck carrying farmworkers…”. The MEC also called on members of the public to take photographs of workers on open trucks “where you see there is potential risk of an accident”, and send them to him “so we can immediately act on these matters”.
Today in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, I submit a set of shocking photographs of people who are forced to risk their lives to earn a crust of bread. These photographs were taken on the outskirts of Robertson, but the scenes are repeated twice daily across rural areas of the province. The photographs include several overloaded bakkies carrying three or four times the “legal” five. Again, a common scene on our roads.
The people in these photographs require the MEC’s protection; the MEC going on radio to proclaim “this is something we must give top priority” – and then sitting on his hands – doesn’t help anyone.
Perhaps MEC Ivan Meyer could have a word with your party leader, the National Minister of Agriculture John Steenhuisen – though his focus appears to be on supporting farmers, not farmworkers.
In his budget speech last year, his transport focus was on getting farmers’ goods to market, while his response to this year’s SONA, lamenting the dismantling of rural safety units as catastrophic, appears to have been written by the DA’s famous colleagues in Centurion.
The Western Cape is rightly proud of the Boland, and the product of its labour. We should be equally ashamed of our labour practices. Would our bubblies taste as glorious to visitors if they knew that the people who produce them are treated worse than pigs? Surely, with a dose of morality, they’d taste even better.