The Forge | The Nyarha FarmWorkers Documentary @TheForgeJHB | Uploaded March 2023 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
In South Africa, the land crisis is not only an emotive issue because of historical inequities but also as a result of the current racial and class distribution of land in the country. The land discussion from a human-centred/ human-rights based perspective allows for an understanding of land from the perspective of “the personal as the political” and that the design of systemic socio-political experiences affects people, which is to say that it affects how people live, work and struggle. There is an intricate interplay between the home, the state and the economy.
This documentary seeks to focus on the theme of “the personal as the political” with a focus on farmworkers in Bedford, Eastern Cape. It seeks to document the lived experiences and struggles of farm workers and how farm workers, as people who work the land, articulate their relationship to the land as farm workers and as farm dwellers. The documentary also seeks to speak to the cultural aspects related to land from the farmworkers’ perspective. For many farm workers, the farm is where they establish ancestral homes due to the fact that several generations of each family work, live and are buried on these farms. Lastly, the documentary seeks to show the systemic intergenerational poverty which is produced in the farm environment and is experienced by farm workers.
In South Africa, the land crisis is not only an emotive issue because of historical inequities but also as a result of the current racial and class distribution of land in the country. The land discussion from a human-centred/ human-rights based perspective allows for an understanding of land from the perspective of “the personal as the political” and that the design of systemic socio-political experiences affects people, which is to say that it affects how people live, work and struggle. There is an intricate interplay between the home, the state and the economy.
This documentary seeks to focus on the theme of “the personal as the political” with a focus on farmworkers in Bedford, Eastern Cape. It seeks to document the lived experiences and struggles of farm workers and how farm workers, as people who work the land, articulate their relationship to the land as farm workers and as farm dwellers. The documentary also seeks to speak to the cultural aspects related to land from the farmworkers’ perspective. For many farm workers, the farm is where they establish ancestral homes due to the fact that several generations of each family work, live and are buried on these farms. Lastly, the documentary seeks to show the systemic intergenerational poverty which is produced in the farm environment and is experienced by farm workers.
