It is very difficult to get access to farms in South Africa. Farms are private property and unauthorized visitors are potentially subject to charges of criminal trespass. Section 6 of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act, however, provides that farm residents have the right "to receive bona fide visitors at reasonable times and for reasonable periods," subject to "reasonable conditions" imposed by the owner. ESTA explicitly attempts to strike a balance between the rights of farm owners (who often assert that a commercial farm should be no different from any other private workplace, where the proprietor has a right to decide who may enter the premises); and the rights of farm residents (for whom the farm is also a home), to dignity, privacy, freedom of movement, family life, and other rights. ⁽³⁴⁵⁾

Farm owners have legitimate concerns about the presence of strangers, especially in the current climate of insecurity on commercial farms. Agri-SA is developing a "protocol" to be followed in order to obtain access to farms or farmworkers, including requirements that all visitors make a prior appointment to obtain access, with "more flexible" arrangements for members of the security forces. ⁽³⁴⁶⁾ In some cases, however, these concerns lead to a violent response: persons on a farm without permission can risk assault or worse from the farm owner. Those working with farm residents, from NGOs or unions, face particular difficulties, and the consequence can be to deprive farm residents of assistance in asserting their rights under the law. In 1997, the Free State Agricultural Union warned that it took exception to the "unauthorized and unreasonable" access to farms by trade union officials and others who entered property without permission. ⁽³⁴⁷⁾ In isolated farming areas even people meeting on public land can face suspicion, and a close watch is kept on those who may be deemed "troublesome." At Ingogo police station, in northern KwaZulu-Natal, the station commissioner requested that the local crisis committee, offering support in cases of illegal evictions, report the presence of all outsiders visiting even public property, including Human Rights Watch. ⁽³⁴⁸⁾

The situation may have improved in some areas: another community leader working with labor tenants commented to Human Rights Watch that, though threats from farmers were still frequent, farmers were not able to use the police to harass activists as in the past. ⁽³⁴⁹⁾ Other fieldworkers have built up relationships with the police and are able to obtain police escorts to farms. 

In some cases, advocates for farm residents face serious harassment. For example, Shirhami Shirinda, fieldworker with the Nkuzi Development Association, has faced threats and harassment on several occasions from farmers and police, as a result of his work. On October 20, 1999, he was traveling to attend a meeting in the Messina area, at a holiday resort near the Maswiri Boerdery, where he had been involved in the case of the dismissed workers, described above. He was stopped outside the meeting hall by two police vans with five policemen, who stated that they came from the Masisi police station and that they had come to arrest him in connection with a case from Gumbu village. When Shirinda demanded a warrant of arrest or statement showing his name as a suspect, it became apparent that the police did not know his name. As Shirinda attempted to enter the meeting hall, since there was no warrant of arrest, he was seized by the policemen. 
 

I was grabbed from behind by the five policemen who were talking to me about the arrest. I started to struggle to get loose but they were holding me with both legs and hands. I didn't walk with them voluntarily, but they dragged me on a tarred surface up until where the police van was parked. At the police van I grabbed the door and then the struggle to put me in and for me getting loose started again. The ones who were holding me by my hands twisted my wrists and I felt pain and they managed to get my upper body into the van. There was another struggle to get my lower body into the van and one policeman hit me on my left foot with the door of the van, I felt pain again and they succeeded in getting my whole body into the van. During the struggle, I sustained several injuries and my jersey was torn apart as a result of the police conduct. Then they drove with me to Masisi police station where I was detained. I was detained as an unknown person as the police who arrested me failed to give the police in the charge office my name. At the police station I insisted to see a docket or a warrant of arrest but they told me that they were not in possession of any. 
 

Shirinda was taken to court the next day and the court ordered that he should be released on bail of R1,000 (U.S.$132). He was not freed, but instead was immediately redetained by another policeman who said he was arresting him in connection with a case in Messina and held for another night. The next day he was taken to Messina, charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police office, brought before court, and released on free bail. ⁽³⁵⁰⁾ This case was still outstanding as of April 2001, when it was postponed because the police failed to come to court. ⁽³⁵¹⁾

Philip Shabalala, a paralegal based in Vryheid, northern KwaZulu-Natal, told Human Rights Watch of a raid on his house, after he had been making inquiries in relation to assaults on farm residents: 
 

Around Christmas 1998, or early 1999, some security came to my house; I'm not sure if it was private security or the commandos. There were two whites and about ten blacks, all wearing army-style camouflage uniform. I asked them why they had come, and they said they were looking for cellphones, because one of the farmers had phoned them to say that I had phoned him and threatened to kill him and so they have come to check if I have a cell phone. I denied this, and asked if they had a search warrant. They said they did not, but they came in anyway and checked all over inside and outside the house. They had big guns, radios, and they were driving four vehicles of the type used by the SANDF. But they couldn't find anything. Then they left. Next day I went to Vryheid police station and spoke to the station commissioner and asked if he had sent those people. He said he knew nothing about it. I told him I was visited by these people who said they were the police, and I reminded him of a case at around that time of a certain Mr. Masondo from Vaalkop who was taken in a white police van to Paulpietersburg and assaulted very badly and left for dead, and asked him how we could trust the police. The station commissioner promised he would bring the person from the roadblock and find out if he was the one who instructed these people to come to my place. He phoned me afterward to say that the person at the roadblock knows about the raid, and I said he must bring him to me so that we can talk to find out why they came. We are just scared now that if white people visit us at home at night they can just assault us or even kill us. But up to now he has not brought this man to me. I tried to open a case: I went to the charge office here in Vryheid, and they said 'how can you open a case when you don't know who you are talking about.' I said they must talk to the station commissioner who knew about it, and they said he was on leave. So I just gave up. ⁽³⁵²⁾
 

The attorney for whom Shabalala works, Christo Loots, has his main office in Pietermaritzburg. He told Human Rights Watch that, when he was opening the office in Vryheid, no white property owner would rent premises to him when it became known the type of work that would be handled. He therefore had to purchase the building where the office is located. He himself had received anonymous phone calls threatening him for his work on land rights, while he has completely ceased to receive instructions from the agricultural cooperatives, for whom he was previously also acting. ⁽³⁵³⁾

In 1997, local farmers told members of the Ingogo Crisis Committee, formed in 1994 in response to a spate of local evictions, that they would be held responsible for any future attacks on farms in the Ingogo area. They accused Shadrack Kubheka, a member of the committee, of threatening that farmers would be slaughtered, following the eviction of several families from a farm, a charge he denies. ⁽³⁵⁴⁾ "When there is a murder of a white farmer they blame us. When [a farming couple] were killed, we didn't know who did it, but because it happened when we had been telling people their rights, they assumed it was us. The farmers came here and wanted to know why they were killed. But then a person was arrested [for the murders] who had been working for them and we didn't know. They had hired him from outside, and then those people cause problems, not us. We live nearby, but we don't know what is happening on the farm, that is the employees." ⁽³⁵⁵⁾

Solly Phetoe, working for the union federation COSATU in North West Province, was threatened and nearly killed by members of Mapogo a Mathamaga when he became involved in a case in which one Mozambican worker was killed and another seriously injured by the vigilante group. Following verbal threats when they met at the police station or court, there was an attempt to kill him. On April 7, 2000, he was driving alone in his vehicle on a deserted stretch of road near Hartebeestpoort dam. A bakkie [pick-up truck] behind flashed at him to stop, which he did not do until he was obliged to do so at a four-way stop. The bakkie [pick up truck] then drew up alongside, Phetoe saw the double leopard head Mapogo symbol, and drew away as quickly as he could. The bakkie [pick up truck], which had three white people and one black in it, attempted to force him off the road, and then shots were fired that broke the back window of Phetoe's car. Fortunately, he was not injured and managed to escape. He reported the case to the Hartebeestpoort police, but they said since he could not identify his attackers--the bakkie [pick up truck] had no registration plates--there was nothing they could do. ⁽³⁵⁶⁾

In December 1997, Sam Moyo, a campaigner for the rights of farmworkers in the Lanseria area near Johannesburg, Gauteng, was arrested by police at his home on a farm in the district. He was kept in prison until May 1998, when the family finally obtained funds to take the bail application to the Johannesburg High Court, which released him on R3,000 (U.S.$395) bail. Moyo was reportedly arrested on charges of intimidation based on information from a security guard employed by a local businessman and farmer. "When Sam was arrested," according to his brother Farayi Moyo, quoted in the Mail and Guardian, "he had laid another charge against one farmer who had beaten a farmworker and then threw him on the fire. But due to his arrest that case vanished into thin air. More surprisingly, three months prior to his arrest, he had laid a similar charge of intimidation against [the farmer who employed the security guard whom Sam Moyo was alleged to have intimidated], but no arrest was made. The investigating officer said there was no valid evidence." ⁽³⁵⁷⁾

In September 1999, Rural Action Committee fieldworker Alfred Ngomane attempted to intervene in a case in Arnot, near Middelburg, where a farm owner was not complying with a court order that his labor tenant be given grazing land. According to Ngomane, "I went with a member of the Transitional Local Council to the farm, and talked to the tenant, and then went to the farmhouse to talk to the farmer. He said he didn't like the guy I was with, and said that if we didn't leave he would drive over our car with a tractor. We had no option but to leave. We immediately went to Middelburg police station and reported the case, but I've heard nothing until now." ⁽³⁵⁸⁾ It is an offence to "wilfully obstruct or interfere with an official in the employ of the State or a mediator in the performance of his or her duties under ESTA," ⁽³⁵⁹⁾ yet even officials with the Department of Land Affairs can face harassment. According to one DLA employee, "There was one case where the farmer locked us inside the farm, when we had been there to negotiate a burial. The landowner had been informed through an attorney that we were coming, but he deliberately locked us in. We subsequently laid a charge with the police, but at no stage did any police official come back to us, and then two or three months later we were told that the prosecutor had declined to prosecute." ⁽³⁶⁰⁾

A private landowner who allowed twenty-three families to stay on her land near Lanseria, Gauteng, after they were evicted from a nearby farm told newspaper reporters that she had been threatened as a result: "I don't know who they are, they disguise their voices and say ugly things to me. They even threatened my children and said they would mutilate them and me." The families had also been threatened by neighboring landowners. ⁽³⁶¹⁾
 

Harassment of Individuals Involved in Union or Political Activities 

Farmworkers or farm residents who attempt to join a union, a political party, or speak to the press may also face harassment or eviction. Farmworkers only obtained the right to organize in 1993, and union organizers still report problems in obtaining access to farmworkers, and harassment of workers who attempt to join unions. Though legalized, farmworkers' unions remain weak. 

The workers for the Maswiri Boerdery whose case is highlighted above were dismissed after they joined a union. The farm owner allegedly then began various forms of harassment which culminated in their dismissal. Similarly, in October 1998, eight workers from the Sandfontein Boerdery near Louis Trichardt were dismissed after union officials came to the farm and workers indicated their interest in joining. The farmer himself was present at the meeting, which went ahead without incident, but when individuals put down their names indicating they were interested in joining the union, eight of thirty-three workers, regarded as the ringleaders, were dismissed. The case was taken to the Commission on Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, and those dismissed still live on the farm. One of these told Human Rights Watch: "The owner sent someone working with him to call me. He said 'are you the one causing the trouble?' and he took out a gun and said, 'this is an automatic gun, with twenty-one bullets; I could shoot you.' Then he turned and went back to his room." ⁽³⁶²⁾ The former worker attempted to open a case with the police about this threat, but they refused to do so until he returned to the police station with a fieldworker from the Nkuzi Development Association. The same informant told Human Rights Watch that "the farmer used to beat people so much. Hitting them with his fists, kicking them. He would follow us with his motorbike, chasing us and saying that he was doing it because we had joined COSATU [the Congress of South African Trades Unions; in fact an umbrella body, rather than an individual union]. But COSATU wouldn't help us because when I phoned they said they didn't know us because we had not actually paid up our membership dues. Since this business the clinic has not come, and the farmer says that he won't buy medicine because COSATU will buy us everything." ⁽³⁶³⁾

A woman working on the same farm, who had lived there all her life, told Human Rights Watch: 
 

We wanted to know our rights as workers. The salary was very little. At the end of the year we were not getting bonuses. One time when we asked [the farmer] for bonuses, he said 'I cannot squeeze my penis to produce money.' We worked overtime and were not paid for that. He only gave us tea when we worked overtime. The current problem started in April 1998 when our trade union representative came to meet with [the farmer], to talk about the conditions on the farm in general. After the trade union representative left, [the farmer] called us individually to his office. He did not want us to become members of a trade union, hence he was angry with us. He told each one of us that she would be dismissed from their job if she kept demanding to be paid more money, because he did not have that money. From that day, [the farmer] made the working conditions on the farm even more difficult. He started to ask us to pick forty, rather than the twenty crates we used to pick per day. When we asked why he had doubled the number of crates per day, he responded sarcastically, by saying, 'SAAPAWU trade union asked me to do so.' He followed behind us riding on his motor-cycle while we were carrying heavy crates of avocados commanding us to 'hurry up.' He even followed us to the toilet and waited by the entrance shouting, 'do it quickly or else get an axe to cut that shit if it's not coming out.' When we asked why he was behaving that way, he always said, 'SAAPAWU trade union asked me to do so.' In March 2000, he evicted us from the farm. ⁽³⁶⁴⁾
 

Farm owners can be hostile towards workers who are actively involved in politics. Human Rights Watch interviewed a young man who is an ANC councillor and former resident on a farm near Eston, in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, and his sister, who was still resident on the farm. "I was born on the farm twenty-seven years ago, and started becoming active in the ANC in the late 80s. I started having problems with the farmer in 1996 when he was evicting some people and I was objecting.... He pointed to me as the one who was encouraging them to go to the Department of Land Affairs and told my parents that he didn't want to see me around here any more. He sent the private security people to tell me to leave.... Early this year we were launching ANC branches in Eston. On February 19, all the farmers gathered at Eston primary school and instructed the [private security company] and the police and told them to come and remind me that I am not allowed here. The station commissioner from Mid-Illovo came to my home where I was staying on the farm with my parents and told me he had been instructed by the farmers to tell me to go. I said that I know my rights and am not going anywhere without a court order for eviction." ⁽³⁶⁵⁾ His sister corroborated this to Human Rights Watch, stating, "In February this year the station commissioner from Mid-Illovo police station came with two other people and said that he had received an instruction from the farm owner that he did not want Sipho here; in fact they don't want anyone who is ANC on the farm. The same day at about 2 pm the [private security company] members also came to our house, four people, and also said we don't need Sipho here and will come again later to check whether he is in or not." ⁽³⁶⁶⁾ Sipho has in fact left the farm. 

Even talking to journalists about farm conditions can cause serious problems: In 1997, farmworker Samuel Moabi was evicted from the farm where he lived and worked after he talked to reporters from the Mail and Guardian about his brutal assault and eviction from his previous place of employment. ⁽³⁶⁷⁾