TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 7

Subsection 2

Farm prisons⁵

16 Another gap was the notorious farm prisons system about which nobody came forward to give evidence. The farm prisons system ensured that farmers were supplied with a cheap supply of labour. African people who failed to produce their passes were, in theory, offered the option of ‘volunteering’ as farm labour in exchange for having charges dropped against them. Arrests for failure to produce a pass became a rich source of labour for the farms. The General Circular 23 of 1954, issued by the Department of Native Affairs stated:

It is common knowledge that large numbers of natives are daily being arrested and prosecuted for contraventions of a purely technical nature. These arrests cost the state large sums of money and serve no useful purpose. The Department of Justice, the South African Police and this Department have therefore held consultations on the problem and have evolved a scheme, the object of which is to induce unemployed natives roaming about the streets in the various urban areas to accept employment outside such urban areas.

17 The prisoners were not taken to court but to labour bureaux where they would be induced or forced to volunteer. Joel Carlson, a Johannesburg attorney, uncovered some of the gross violations of human rights that resulted from the system. An affidavit by Robert Ncube in the late 1950s stated:

After I had been there [on a farm] for about four months I noticed one day a boss boy, Tumela, who was only about sixteen years old, beating one of the workers who was cutting firewood. After the assault I noticed this man’s nose was bleeding a lot. The man sat down and his nose continued to bleed and he was left there until we were locked up at six o’clock. The following morning he was unable to get up and work. He was shivering all the time. He did not work for three days and on that Saturday morning he died. The boss boy, Philip, told four of the workers to carry him into the room where the dead are kept and the body was left there until Monday morning. On Monday afternoon about half past four, I and seven others, including Philip, carried the body and buried it on the farm. There were other graves where we buried him. I never saw a doctor or the police come to see the body before it was buried.

18 As a result of the publicity around this and other cases, the farm labour scheme was suspended. However, within weeks, the government passed an amended Prisons Act of 1959, providing for short-term offenders to be processed quickly through the courts and sent to the farms. The act provided that the farms be considered prisons and that it was a criminal offence to publish anything about prison conditions without the prior consent of the Commissioner of Prisons.