Farmer politicians end up knee-deep in the manure

What is it with our political leaders and their wayward farming practices? In two months there have been two major scandals involving politicians moonlighting as farmers.

First it was revealed that Senzeni Zokwana, the new agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister, was paying his 21-year-old cattle herder R800 a month, way below the statutory R108-a-day minimum for farmworkers.

The revelation in City Press - accompanied by a photograph of a pitiful shack in which the herder's predecessor lived - proved deeply embarrassing to Zokwana, a leading Communist Party official and former president of the National Union of Mineworkers, who reportedly earned R1.2-million last year. So embarrassing that he quickly announced that he had upped the herder's monthly salary to R2400. One has to wonder whether he would have done so without the damaging publicity.

It has since emerged that Thandi Modise, the former North West premier who now chairs the National Council of Provinces, faces five charges of animal cruelty after dozens of pigs, sheep, goats and chickens on her farm died from starvation and thirst.

SPCA staff, confronted by the rotting bodies of the livestock, described the case as the worst instance of neglect they had seen.

Modise's contrite statement yesterday, in which she said she was ''saddened by the abandonment and trauma that the livestock suffered after workers employed on the farm unceremoniously left without notice'' was somewhat undercut when she added that the suffering endured by the animals ''does not compare to the financial loss that I suffered''.

This is not good enough - not from a leading legislator and certainly not from a farmer.

Zokwana and Modise are supposed to be leaders who drive the post-apartheid agenda for a more just, progressive and humane society. Underpaying farmworkers and letting them live in poor conditions, or allowing labour relations on one's farm to deteriorate to the point at which the workers leave, causing the livestock to starve to death, is just not on.

Modise and Zokwana would be well advised to stick to their day jobs.