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VIOLENCE ACCOMPANYING EVICTIONS

I cannot remember my exact age, but my son said I am seventy-two years old. What I know is that my grandfather was also born here. This umlungu [white man] started evicting me seven years ago when he bought the farm from the one who stayed here only five years. He wanted me to stop plowing my field and ordered me to sell my cattle and work for him for R30-00 a month. I told him that I cannot survive on this money. He then got angry and ordered me to leave 'his farm.' Since then he has evicted me six times and I kept on coming back. I was taken to umaje [the magistrate] several times and I told him I was born here and know no other place. I was born here and so were my parents. There is no reason why I should leave. I will die here. This is my father's place, and as an elder son I have inherited it. (275)
 

Historically, evictions of black workers and tenants from South Africa's farms have been carried out with the explicit and active use of force, whether by individual farmers or by the state security forces. The transition period from 1990 to 1994 and the early years of the new government saw a fresh wave of farm evictions, as farmers acted pre-emptively to remove workers and tenants from their land, for fear that they would acquire permanent rights. There were further surges during the periods leading up to the passing of the Labour Tenants Act and the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) in 1996 and 1997. (276) Although these peaks in the rate of evictions have flattened off, anecdotal evidence from those working with farm residents indicates that evictions of farm residents are still carried out in violation of the law. Moreover, although the law reform measures introduced by the government since 1994 have provided greater protections for farm residents, they do not provide a right to secure tenure, but only a regulated procedure for allowing tenure to be terminated, and evictions also continue in accordance with the legal procedures. Though there are still difficulties with getting farmers to follow the letter of the law, even when attempting to obtain a legal eviction, the financial costs incurred by some farmers who have been taken to court for failing to follow the rules have served as a warning to others. Several lawyers representing farm residents reported to Human Rights Watch that they now find it easier to deal with farmers than in the past. Most of the cases in which the legality of an eviction has been challenged before the Land Claims Court appear to be the Western Cape, and the areas of northern KwaZulu-Natal and southern Mpumalanga where there are still many labor tenants. (277)

In November 2000, the National Assembly adopted a report on farm evictions in four provinces prepared by the parliamentary portfolio committee on land affairs. (278) The report concluded that "It is nearly impossible to attach a figure to the total number of evictions taking place throughout these provinces." While the report noted that many problems with the existing laws on security of tenure related to implementation rather than loopholes in the acts, it concluded that "the biggest flaw in ESTA is that the Act merely regulates tenure rights without actually providing security of tenure," and recommended a review of the legislation. The report also urged an investigation into the role of the commandos, police and sheriffs in evictions. 

In May 2000, following reports of several especially brutal evictions, and against the context of contemporaneous violence on farms in Zimbabwe, President Mbeki expressed his concern, stating that he was "deeply disturbed by these practices." (279)

The Department of Land Affairs has sought to monitor evictions in contravention of the Labour Tenants Act and Extension of Security of Tenure Act. DLA officials are required to collect information relating to all evictions reported to the department or to other bodies, such as NGOs. In KwaZulu-Natal, KWANALU, the agricultural union, has also participated in the information collection process. The statistics remain sketchy and incomplete: many evictions, especially those carried out family by family rather than of a group of households at once, still go unreported. However, they indicate that there were hundreds of threatened evictions countrywide during the period from November 1999 to August 2000, and at least 125 illegal evictions in the same period. Thousands of people were affected by these threats or evictions. (280) Those who are evicted face further impoverishment, loss of their housing, and disruption to the education of their children. 

In many cases, evictions are carried out not by the direct use of the law or the application of force, but through the creation of conditions that cause farm residents to leave their homes "voluntarily." The methods used include the cutting off of water or other services, the closure of schools or clinics, or the denial of grazing or cultivation rights. "When the current owner bought the farm in 1995 he tried to evict us all because we were not working. Before he came we had enough grazing and land for cropping but now he has taken it away." (281) At Mooiplaas farm near Piketberg in the Western Cape, the farmer cut the water supply to the farm residents in 1999: as a result, residents had to walk long distances in search of water, and basic hygiene and sanitation suffered, with adverse health consequences. (282)

A woman resident on a farm near Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal described some of the farm owner's efforts to make life difficult for those he wanted to leave: 
 

In January 2000, the farmer took down all the fences from the fields round our houses and let all his livestock graze on our fields, and his cattle destroyed what we had planted. I told the induna [headman] that he must tell the farmer that his cows are destroying our property, and he came back and said that the farmer had said that we must put a fence around our fields--but he was the one who had taken down the fences which were put there by the previous owner. I was born there and the fence has been there ever since I was born. Since then the cows are grazing on our fields and roaming around our homesteads and we can't collect firewood any more. There is a neighboring farm where we are allowed to collect firewood, but the farmer has telephoned the farmer to say he should not allow us because we are breaking the fence, and he now says if he sees us going to the neighboring farm he will shoot us and take us to the police station. Before, he allowed us to collect firewood on his farm, but not now; he has burnt all that forest so we can't collect there. (283)
 

Today as in the past, many evictions are accompanied with violence or the threat of violence, violence that seldom enters the official record. As one Pietermaritzburg lawyer handling eviction cases commented: "The great majority of evictions are under threat of violence, obviously. We have become so used to it that we don't even record it any more, since there's not much we can do." (284)

Farmworkers remain vulnerable to forcible eviction, including some forced evictions carried out in accordance with the terms of the law. In particular, farmers are anxious to remove from the farm all those who do not have a family member actively working on the farm; in some cases, only the working member is allowed to be resident, even in areas of labor tenancy where work on a farm traditionally brought rights of residency and cultivation for the whole family. "What is my main worry now is that he does not want my children on the farm.... He says that he does not want them because they are not working on the farm." (285) From one day to the next an apparently secure position with a good relationship with the farmer, including land to cultivate, can be destroyed, because the farm is sold to a new owner, or the person who had been working on the farm is no longer available. "I was evicted in 1996. My son was working as a tractor driver but he asked the farmer for a raise, and when he refused he went to work for a construction company instead and left the farm. The farmer said I must then go as well because my son was not working. I went to look for a place but when I was still looking my children came to me and said the farmer was at my house with the security people chasing us away. So I had to take all my possessions and move out of the farm. I did not report this to anyone because there was no time, I was taken by surprise. This was his land and he can do as he likes. He started by moving us from our own houses to a compound, but then he bulldozed the compound too. There were about three families chased away at the same time. There was no notice, they just came. We couldn't even get all our possessions." (286)

In some cases, evictions from farms appear to be driven by security concerns. As one survey of farm owners noted: "those who had recently cut back the number of workers on their farm were somewhat less worried [about crime] than those who had done the opposite. That is to say, those who dispensed with farmworkers or evicted them did not seem to worry about revenge.... On the other hand, those farmers who had taken on more labor were more anxious than others--suggesting, all too nakedly, that the reverse did not apply and that for some white farmers, at least, having more black people living nearby simply increased one's sense of insecurity." (287) Such concerns have also contributed to the increasingly close controls some farmers have introduced over those who live on the farm and their would-be visitors. "Since 1996 the farmer has taken photographs of all the people working on the farm. They want to stop people living on the farm who have no permit. If there is a visitor from outside the farm they must get a permit letter, say how much time they will spend there, etc. You are allowed to visit your family but you are not allowed to stay without a permit; and the security come and check during the night. We used to live in our own houses, but now we are all moved into a compound which used to be a butchery." (288)

Sibongile Ndlela (not her real name) is twenty-nine years old with one child. She stayed with her four brothers and a sister, on a farm in KwaZulu-Natal where both her parents had died and were buried. Problems with the farm owner started when Sibongile's eldest brother, who was then the sole worker in the family, died in January 2000. The farm owner demanded that Sibongile hand over all her deceased brother's property to him. When Sibongile refused to do so, the farm owner told her that she and her other siblings were evicted from the farm. Sibongile told Human Rights Watch: 
 

The owner of the farm bought my brother a wheelchair in March 1998 after my brother got injured while he was working on the farm. A straw bale fell on my brother breaking his spinal cord and he became paralyzed. When my brother died in January this year, [the owner] demanded the wheel chair as well as my brother's clothes claiming that all this property belonged to him. When I refused to give him the property, he took the wheel chair only and told me that he did not want to see me on the farm anymore, as well as my remaining siblings. I reported the case to the local council who advised me to go and report the case to the Department of Land Affairs in Pietermaritzburg. When I reported the case to the Department of Land Affairs, they called [the owner] and told him not to evict us from the farm. We are still staying on the farm, but receive threats, occasionally, from the farm owner that he will send the farm security to evict us. (289)
 

Another resident of the same farm told Human Rights Watch how he was evicted in 1997: 
 

I was born on the farm and lived there all my life. We were living in houses that we built by ourselves on the farm. The farm owner did not provide us with housing, until in 1997 when he built some nice houses for farm workers. However, only people who were working on the farm were allowed in the new farm compound, though my mother and brother who still worked on that farm were allowed to stay with the rest of us. Myself, my father and my sister were denied accommodation in the new compound. One morning during October 1997, the farm owner sent the farm security to destroy the old houses where we stayed, leaving us with no accommodation. The security were instructed to evict us from the farm on the same day. They killed all our livestock, about five goats and several chickens and doves. They even threatened to shoot us. We fled to my sister's house in Hammersdale. Many families were evicted as well, and their livestock was shot. Approximately sixty people were evicted from the farm. We reported the case to Mid-Illovo police but they did not help us. We also asked the Department of Land Affairs to help by reinstating us onto the farm, but they kept promising to look into our case since 1997. (290)
 

Even when an evicted family has considerable assistance, it can be difficult to get action from the courts. One couple interviewed by Human Rights Watch had lived on a farm for twenty-six years, and had therefore acquired rights under ESTA. They had an excellent relationship with the farm owner, were paid well, and had land of their own to cultivate. The farm owner went bankrupt and the farm was sold; the new owner said that he wanted them to leave: "He chased us away saying that he didn't want to see a kaffir on this farm; he had bought the farm not us, and that if we stayed he would fight." (291) Even though the previous owner took his former employees to the magistrates' court for assistance the day they were evicted, and a magistrate advised that they were allowed to stay there, they were forced to leave, their belongings thrown out on the road. The magistrate took no action himself, nor did he send them to report the matter to the police, even though the farmer's action was apparently in violation in the law. Rather, he directed them to seek assistance from the land rights organization Nkuzi, based in Pietersburg. 

Evictions of this type are often accompanied by assaults or other explicit violence. A former farm resident from Ingogo, KwaZulu-Natal, told Human Rights Watch "I was on the farm for many years, then the sheriff of the court came with a letter and said I must leave. A long time after the letter, in about November or December 1997, the farmer came with some other farmers and about five policemen and they demolished some of my buildings and took my belongings and took me away. Then the crisis committee [formed in response to illegal evictions] intervened and took me back to the farm. About three weeks later soldiers and police came, together with the farm manager. They came with a bulldozer and about six people. There were many, more than twenty, in three vehicles for the soldiers and two vans and a car for the police. They ordered us to go outside and then they demolished the houses and collected some of our belongings and put them on a truck and took us to the road; there were twenty-nine people. My daughter was beaten up badly. She went to get my money from my house, and they were threatening to shoot her, and they beat her. They were heavily armed. We walked to find our things which they had dumped at different places." (292)

Another former farm resident from the same area reported a similar case: "I was living on the farm for some years, since 1982. I had twenty cattle, forty goats, three pigs and two horses. Then in August 1999, the farm was sold. The previous owner said we would work for the new owners too, but they said no and asked us to leave. Many of us left, but I did not leave, I stayed on by myself with my family. Then one day the [owners] came in the afternoon and demolished my houses with a bulldozer. The crisis committee people then came, but they were chased away by the [owners]. They fired some shots, though nobody was hurt. After that they called the police and soldiers. They came at about 7 pm with some other farmers I did not know, and took me to the old railway station [state land now occupied by a number of mostly evicted families]. There were many, I don't know how many because it was night, but there were two vehicles, one for soldiers and one for police. They were armed. I had received no letters and was not called to court. I am living by the railway station now. I have had to sell some livestock; I am renting grazing land for my cattle." (293) A member from the Ingogo Crisis Committee confirmed the story, and told how she was also assaulted: "Around 10 pm, I was called by the wife of [the previous witness] who came to say that they were being harassed. We went to help, and we found soldiers there and the station commissioner from the Ingogo police station, and the [owners]. I asked what they were doing, since it didn't look like they had a court order, but then they chased me away. When I was at the gate one of the two brothers [who owned the farm] came rushing and held me by my neck and I fell, and he beat me with a gun, hitting me on my forehead. My sister came to ask what was happening and they beat her too with a gun, around her middle. I went to report the case to the police, but the station commissioner, the one before this one, said no, because the police had been there and they knew I was lying that I had been assaulted. Eventually they did refer me to a doctor in Newcastle and the case was opened, but it did not go anywhere." (294)

A former farm resident from near Commondale told of a case in which a private security company [the same one involved in the cases described above] had assisted in an eviction. "Our home was burnt down by the farmer in 1997. We reported to the Department of Land Affairs but they did not help. The farmer was using the [private security company] to help him. They were beating us during the night, and we had to sleep on the mountain. There were five or six people from [the private security company], one white and the others black, all wearing uniform, and the farm owner. They were all carrying big guns. The whole family was beaten. We were evicted because my husband died. They burnt all our property and burnt the house; everything is gone. They gave us two days notice, but there was nothing like a court hearing." (295)

The large paper and timber company Mondi Ltd, a member of the Anglo-American group of companies, generally has a good reputation when it comes to the thousands of people living on its forest land, many of whom are not its employees. The company has provided school buildings in many cases, and there are few allegations that it has illegally evicted or otherwise mistreated people; unions are permitted to operate freely among those who work for the company. Yet workers living on one of the plantations owned by Mondi near Tzaneen, Northern Province, which it is in the process of selling, found themselves evicted and their accommodation bulldozed without a court order. Although there was no physical violence involved, the difficulty in obtaining police assistance is illustrative of the problems faced even by a well-organized resident population faced with arbitrary action by the land owner. In December 1998, workers at the timber factory on the plantation were called to a meeting and told that the factory would be closed temporarily and that the management did not know the new terms on which it would reopen. The workers carried on living in the accommodation provided by the company. Several months later they started receiving letters saying that on September 16, 1999, the water and electricity would be cut and that the buildings would then be destroyed. At a meeting between shop stewards representing the workers and the Mondi area manager, this was repeated, and they were told they should seek accommodation in the villages of the surrounding former homeland areas. None of the people living on the plantation agreed to go. About a month later, a bulldozer simply came to the settlement and started knocking down the buildings, under the direction of a Mondi manager. The people sought help from the Pietersburg-based Nkuzi Development Association, who came the next day and went to the Tzaneen police station to open a case under ESTA. 
 

At Tzaneen police station it seemed to be the first case they had dealt with like this, so they didn't know how to approach it. They fetched the station commissioner, and he also didn't know. The Nkuzi fieldworker had to give them a copy of the law, then he began to understand. They opened a case, and said they would come the next day, but took no statements. They have never come to talk to us. (296)
 

When the people working for Mondi returned the next day and were shown Nkuzi business cards, they agreed to stop the destruction. About half of the 600 people who used to live on the estate have left; thirty-one dwellings are left standing. Mondi's senior management has stated that the demolition of the houses was not in accordance with company policy, though no compensation was paid to those whose homes were destroyed. Nkuzi entered into negotiations with Mondi with a view to obtaining the transfer of the land to the occupiers; during the process, the land was sold to a new proprietor, with whom they are now also in negotiation. (297)

For more vulnerable groups, the consequences can be even more severe, and the violence much more explicit, even where a court order has been obtained. Members of a large group of former residents of a farm near Greytown, totaling about twenty-six families, told how they were evicted in November 1997: 
 

He gave us papers and ordered us to go home and not come back to work, but we were not sure what was written on the papers. On November 10, he started burning houses, if they were thatched, or knocking them down with a bulldozer if they had zinc roofs. We had no warning. Prior to that, a few weeks earlier, the police came and raided the place in about seven vans. There were about twenty policemen, and dogs. The police were searching all over for guns but they found nothing. They asked us, 'where are your guns,' and we said we had none. They said they would come back with dogs, but they still found nothing. Then they just left. We don't know who sent them. The day they came to destroy the houses there were more than ten people with different roles. Some would surround the houses with guns while others destroyed them. They were all armed. We were not even given time to take our property out of the houses. Most of us just left everything. They just arrived one morning and then stayed about a week. It was raining. There were police present when the bulldozers were there, one van with two officers. They were quite sympathetic; in fact they advised us to come to Greytown police station and ask the station commissioner to stop these guys bulldozing our houses. So a committee went there, but the station commissioner said that he couldn't do anything because we were being evicted with a court order (but we hadn't heard anything about a court order), and in any event it was not his jurisdiction and we should go to Muden. So we went to Muden but the station commissioner there said that it was not his jurisdiction either. After that we gave up. We were all scattered, we only had somewhere to sleep because a fieldworker from AFRA found us on the side of the road and organized a hall for us out of the rain. (298)
 

Residents of the "Joe Slovo" squatter camp, a group of no more than ten houses on land owned by an absentee farmer near Lanseria airport, northwest of Johannesburg, told Human Rights Watch of harassment by a neighboring farm owner. During 1998, the farm owner told the residents of the settlement that they should leave, and one morning he came right into the camp, demanding that they go. "One of us, Obed, approached him and said that he could not tell us to go, and he fired three shots, to either side of him; they hit the wall behind. Then he beat him [Obed] with the butt of the gun. We picked up the cartridges and took them to the police station in Randburg with a delegation from the camp. They just said we were on the land illegally, and we should move off the property. Then we went to the ANC office, and they asked for details of the farmer, and I think someone from the ANC phoned him, and since then he has not come here again." (299)

In 1999, the Pietersen family was evicted from a state-owned farm in the Western Cape by the premier of the Western Cape, who had failed to follow the provisions of ESTA. When representatives of Lawyers for Human Rights, an NGO, arrived at the farm at the request of the Department of Land Affairs, they found about thirty policemen firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the air, amidst an angry crowd of community members, including school children, who had tried to prevent the police and court sheriff from removing the Pietersens' belongings by placing burning tires at the entrance to the residential area. One woman was injured and taken to hospital. (300)

In another case, Lawyers for Human Rights approached the Land Claims Court on an urgent basis in August 2000, on behalf of sixteen people who had been living on Weskus Farm in Brackenfell, Western Cape for various periods of time, some as long as seven or eight years. On the morning of Saturday, July 29, 2000, the soon-to-be-new owner of the farm arrived with two bulldozers and workers to level the land where Lawyers for Human Rights' clients were living in informal structures of wood, plastic and other materials. During the ensuing destruction of their homes, some of those living there tried to grab a few of their personal belongings; others were away at the time, and most were left with only the clothes that they were wearing. Among the things destroyed or lost were identity documents, clothing, cooking utensils, bedding and other possessions. Other occupiers living on the farm were served with a letter stating that they must leave the farm, and then alerted Lawyers for Human Rights, who intervened with the landowner. The reaction from the landowner was that the people were not living in houses but in the bushes and that he was not prepared to replant the bushes. (301)

As Lawyers for Human Rights pointed out: 
 

A case of this nature is extremely time consuming. The two attorneys worked many after hours, weekends and public holidays. The case took eight days to get to court. Some of the challenges of this type of litigation included: Clients did not know the address of the current owner. We therefore had to get special instructions from court to serve the papers. The attorney had to collect the client who had been to the owners house previously and drive 1.5 hours. They then had to drive around this place until the client recognized the house. The police were willing to accompany the lawyers to the house to serve the papers, but would not serve the papers as the court had instructed. Clients were so poor and did not have money for transport. Therefore, when urgent replying papers had to be drafted, other members of staff had to fetch and carry clients. This occurred on the day of court as well. At certain stages, we could not get hold of our clients as they had managed to find work for the day. Most clients did not have permanent employment. They had lost everything and therefore had to work in order to get money for food. (302)
 

A settlement was eventually reached and made an order of court. In terms of the settlement agreement, clients received blankets, mattresses, pots, buckets, three rooms, and two container structures to live in. It was recognised that clients were occupiers in terms of South African law and protected by the Extension of Security of Tenure Act. 
 

The Maswiri Boerdery 

The complex interlinking of a range of different types of abuse is epitomized by the case of the Maswiri Boerdery, an orange farm in the Messina area, close to the Zimbabwe border, owned by Andries Fourie. Conditions on the farm were poor, and wages low. In early 1998, several hundred workers from the farm were dismissed when they joined a union. They were replaced with Zimbabwean migrant workers. After the employees were dismissed, which the employer stated was on account of an illegal strike, they were given notices to leave the farm. A court interdict was granted in favor of Maswiri Boerdery restricting the movement of the dismissed workers to certain defined areas of the farm; according to the former workers, this interdict was never properly served and they were not made aware of its terms. (303) The eviction case is still going through the courts. 

According to workers at the farm who spoke to Human Rights Watch, at around the same time as they were dismissed they heard that workers on another farm owned by Fourie had also been fired, and the farmer had called the police to collect them and take them away; they were believed to be Zimbabwean migrant workers. A delegation of union shop stewards then went to Fourie to ask why the others had been fired, but were not satisfied with his response. The delegation came back and agreed with their colleagues that they would demand an explanation on why the others had been arrested. When they staged a sit-down near the school, Fourie called the police. The subsequent events formed the subject of a South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) inquiry. 

On March 3, 1998, about thirty policemen came to the farm, in response, as they later stated to the SAHRC, to a complaint from Fourie that his former employees were contravening the court order. According to some of those present, the police were mostly white with some black police handling dogs. 
 

We sat for a long time waiting.... The police captain then gave an order that he wanted all of us inside the van in fifteen minutes. But we didn't want to get into the van because we didn't know any crime we had committed. After fifteen minutes, he gave the order 'one minute,' and after that minute 'on your marks, get ready, go'; and then they started grabbing people, assaulting them, kicking them, trampling on people. When I got up I was trying to run because I didn't want to get in the van, but the captain started assaulting me and telling me to get in the van. I asked what crime did I commit that I should get in the van, but he just said, 'get in the van, or we can make it difficult for you,' and carried on hitting me. Everyone else got in when they saw me being beaten up. About 150 people were arrested that time, and eighty-five later. More women were arrested than men, and there were also school children and infants. One was bitten by dogs. (304)
 

According to the police version of this incident, the police were met on arrival at the farm by a crowd, including some who were armed with sticks, stones, and metal pipes, and adopted a "threatening, violent, and provocative attitude." The South African Human Rights Commission found that this version of events was "highly improbable." (305)

The workers were taken to Messina police station, where they were locked in the cells overnight and taken to court the next day. After much legal argument, they were released on free bail. Those arrested were initially charged with contravening the court interdict, later with trespass, and in some cases with resisting arrest; according to the Nkuzi Development Association, those arrested included people who were in no way connected with the farm or the interdict. (306) All charges against the farmworkers were, after numerous court appearances, subsequently dismissed by the Messina magistrates court. (307)

Three of those assaulted laid charges against the police, but these have not led to prosecutions. Shirhami Shirinda of the Nkuzi Development Association reported to Human Rights Watch that the police were reluctant to follow the case up, saying that they could not find witnesses. Only when Shirinda took the witnesses to the police station did the police take statements from them. (308) Nkuzi also complained to the Independent Complaints Directorate, responsible for investigating complaints against the police, but received a response indicating that the investigation was proper, an assessment Nkuzi challenges. 

Azwindini Maggie Randima, a middle aged woman with three children, was born on the farm and had been working there all her life since she became a teenager: 
 

After we were dismissed we were given notices to leave the farm. They threatened to call soldiers, but only lots of white people came from the neighboring farms. They were using horses and coming in the night into the village and threatening us. One day, May 29, 1998, I woke up in the morning and I was just in my underwear going to the toilet in the bush. Before I even got there I was arrested by the farm security. They took me to Mr. Fourie and he said he was calling the police to arrest me because I had entered an area that was restricted by a court interdict that ruled that we were only allowed to stay in our houses.... I had to stay there under the jacaranda tree the whole day until 6 pm still in my underwear with the security guarding me. When the guards went away they locked me in the store room, then took me to another farm and I was kept in the back of the car until 11 pm. They then took me to Messina police station. The police inquired what offence I was charged with and the security guard said I was found in a restricted area. I tried to explain I was in an area where I was allowed, but they insisted on arresting me. At around 1 am they said I should sleep and I was locked in the cells with two other women. In the morning they took my fingerprints but they said that since it was Saturday I would have to wait till Monday to go to court and so I stayed there all weekend. A Zimbabwean gave me a t-shirt and a towel to wear as a skirt over my underwear. (309)
 

According to Nkuzi, the police refused to intervene on behalf of Randima, even after they were informed that she was being held on the farm. (310) The South African Human Rights Commission, considering this case, found that, on the basis of Mr. Fourie's own evidence, he was "aware of the inhumane manner in which Ms. Randima was detained" by the farm security, a company known as Pro-Tek. While, "on the evidence before us," the commission found that the arrest was lawful, it also ruled that "Holding people for long periods in private detention is simply unacceptable.... [T]he conditions under which Ms. Randima was detained amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." (311) On the grounds that Mr. Fourie had undertaken that no such incident would happen again, the commission made no specific recommendation regarding redress, though "it is open for Ms Randima to pursue whatever action she may think is appropriate." (312)