Slave wages and the deaths of about 10,000 Zimbabwean farmworkers as a consequence of the government’s land-redistribution policy.
These are some of the issues highlighted by rights groups in a recent report published on the plight of the country’s one million farmworkers.
The change from predominantly white farm owners to mainly black farmers brought about by President Robert Mugabe’s fast-track land reform programme, launched in 2000, has not improved the lot of farmworkers.
I is condemned by human rights lawyers in a recent statement, “The Legitimisation of Contemporary Forms of Slavery – The Case of Farm Workers in Zimbabwe”.
“Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights [ZLHR] joins like-minded Zimbabweans in condemning, in the strongest of terms, the treatment and conditions which Zimbabwean farm workers have had to, and continue to, endure,” the ZLHR said.
It called on the government and farmers to “be cognisant of the harsh and ever-deteriorating economic environment present, and the need for the workers to survive,” a sentiment echoed by the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ).
Kilde: www.irinnews.org
