Thulami Mtembu has worked at Magwa Tea Estate for 33 years. For him it is more than a job.
“It’s the smell. Every day I come here I feel so refreshed,” he says. “I love the aroma of the tea bush. The conditions here make our tea special.”
The fragrant, lime-green bushes stretch away to the horizon at the biggest tea plantation in the southern hemisphere. It is a deceptively tranquil scene. Magwa has been racked by strikes, violence and financial strife that have brought production to a standstill.
The crisis encapsulates South Africa’s struggle to realize the potential of its wealth of natural resources. It is a story of low or unpaid wages, powerful unions, political inertia and allegations of financial mismanagement. It is a stark example of self-destruction.
The 1,800 hectare Magwa farm outside Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape province is blessed with an ideal climate and soil type for tea. At its peak five years ago it came close to profitability, producing 2,700 tonnes of tea in a season. The farm employed 1,200 permanent and 2,300 seasonal workers.
However, when the market shrank and the tea price declined, the problems began. The provincial economic development corporation stepped in and, despite emergency subsidies from the state, tensions over wages erupted.
The farm claimed its workers were the best-paid in the industry, earning five times more than their counterparts in Malawi. But even today, some still earn 1,100 rand (US$145) a month, below the national minimum wage of 1,376 rand for farm work, according to Nkosinathi Mbolo, who is arbitrating between management and employees.
Sweating in the afternoon sun, Vukile Jikwayo, 51, a mechanic, said he earned 1,250 rand a month.
“The money is too little — I have to buy food and educate five children. All we want is a better income,” he says.
From 2009, the workers rebelled over changes to their terms of conditions. Laborers who pluck tea leaves and throw them over their shoulder into a backpack were told to increase their haul from 200kg to 253kg a day on the same pay, according to the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU).
Then Magwa’s management gave pay rises of 100 percent to some workers, but not others, the union claims.
“This led to conflict among the workers: management was selective in terms of compensation,” said Mbalisi Tonga, FAWU’s provincial secretary in the Eastern Cape. “The manager said he would reward, in his words, ‘deserving cases.’”
Tonga said there was further resentment when, to comply with the law, lunch breaks were extended from 30 minutes to an hour — but with a deduction of 6 rand.
“At that point, they unified the workers. The workers said we must fight and the strike started,” Tonga said.
There was a strike in 2010 and again last year. What happened during the latter is bitterly disputed. Tonga says picketing workers were beaten and arrested by police. Management accused the workers of a violent rampage in which shots were fired, buildings gutted and a security guard killed.
“The place was ruined,” estate manager Mtembu said. “They burned all the houses, destroyed protective clothing and removed everything — furniture, ceilings, floors, windows. It was a looting spree. The management ran away and it was a free-for-all. A security guard was killed and supervisors were severely beaten. Any manager present that day would have been killed too. It was workers versus management. Some of the workers themselves were beaten because they got caught off guard.”
Magwa security manager Daan Schoeman was quoted by South African media last year as saying a manager called him with a desperate plea for help.
“He said, ‘Help Daan, they’re killing me,’ but I couldn’t do anything. It was impossible to get in. They chopped him up with pangas [machete-like tools], but he made it out [alive]. One of the security guards, though, was shot dead. That day, I started becoming an old man,” Schoeman said.
The union denies the charges.
“From the information we got, there was no violence. We trust our sources because there were court cases. Complainants ... have not been able to sustain their claims in court,” Tonga said.
Asked about the death, he replied: “I have heard about it and some members were taken to court, but ... they were acquitted.”
The management used the strikes as a convenient excuse to flee, Tonga added.
“As the management, you are supposed to take the responsibility and face it. What happens at Magwa is that if there’s a strike, it’s a holiday for management,” he said.
General manager Ian Crawford left the estate in September. Attempts by the Guardian to contact him failed. Last month, speaking to South Africa’s Financial Mail, he described Magwa as “a murky, messy scenario with politicians and other people ducking and diving” and said he was taking it to court for money he is owed.
“Until the politics around Magwa is resolved and discipline is restored in the workplace, it will never recover,” he added. “It’s game over for a project that had huge potential to uplift poor people.”
Crawford has been criticized by workers and the government alike.
“Mr Crawford was running Magwa like his own house,” Ayabulela Ngoqo of the department of rural development said. “He was a man who could stop on the side of the road and sign a check. There was a revolt from the workers.”
Other managers who had left the farm in February last year returned in November, too late to save that year’s harvest. In some months workers went unpaid.
“A whole season was lost: maybe about 30 million rand. Everything we are doing now is getting ready for next season. We talk to the workers — but we don’t talk about the past,” Mtembu said.
An uneasy truce has been reached, with managers and workers in dialogue, though some managers remain offsite, but a shortage of funds to invest in tractors, trailers, coal and diesel means that employees have been reduced to “piece work” of six hours instead of the standard nine. The fields are being maintained in readiness, but there is no guarantee of a harvest in September.
“This would normally be operating at full steam, but there is a shortage of coal and parts,” Mbolo said.
So the paralysis continues.
“As far as production is concerned, there is nothing happening. We don’t have funds to buy coal or diesel. We have made requests to the government. It did promise 20 million rand to assist with the planting, but sometimes politicians make promises and don’t cover all the costs,” Mtembu said. “There is no pay rise. We cannot predict another strike. If the workers want to do those things they’ll simply do them. If they want to resort to violence, they’ll resort to violence. It depends on the quality of the union leadership.”
However, Mtembu is optimistic that South Africa’s last tea plantation can be saved.
“I would not have come back if I did not feel the company has potential. There’s no point sitting at home with so much knowledge: Let me assist. The company was once a star and can be a star again,” he said.
Ngoqo said the government was still working on a rescue package.
Until then, Magwa is left clinging to past glories.
“Twenty years ago they got a trophy from France for the best tea in the world. That trophy is not there now. I don’t know if it got lost or burned down with the office,” Tonga said.
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