Workers must tell story: iLive
A resident rolls a tyre into a burning barricade during a strike called by the Confederation of South African Trade Unions in the small farming town of Franschoek, near Cape Town, December 4, 2012 . Last month workers in the farming belt around Cape Town went on the rampage, blockading roads with rocks and setting vineyards and warehouses ablaze.
Image by: MIKE HUTCHINGS / REUTERS
Image by: MIKE HUTCHINGS / REUTERS
IT IS puzzling that Ron Claassens ("Why is farmers' side of story not told?", December 7) feels the true story about farmers is not being told in the media.
Who should tell that story? Surely not the farmers. Hunters can never be expected to tell a balanced story from the perspective of the hunted animals.
The true story of the exploitative farmers can only be told by the farmworkers who receive slave wages.
Claassens is not saying the workers are lying. To claim that had the Western Cape been governed by the ANC, these disputes would not have been experienced is disingenuous. Would workers say they are earning R150, not R65, a day because the province was governed by the ANC?
It is the wearer who knows where the shoe pinches, not the shoemaker.
The latter is looking at the bottom line, and nothing else.
SHARE YOUR OPINION
If you have an opinion you would like to share on this article, please send us an e-mail to the Times LIVE iLIVE team. In the mean time, click here to view the Times LIVE iLIVE section.