Illegal food?
Are basic human rights being denied on Zambian plantations?
Last March I visited a tenant farmer family in Mazabuka, Zambia, who had lost their 16 year old daughter to malaria because they couldn’t afford transport to a hospital, nor the proper medicine. The AACDP had helped the family start a small patch of corn to feed the family.
I was shocked to learn that it is customary on these giant plantations to forbid their tenant workers growing any other food for themselves except corn and pumpkins. (See post “Education Urgently Desired” 4/26/10)
Now the father of this family has been fired for growing corn “too near his house”. There is reason to believe he won’t receive his termination benefits from eight years of work. His monthly salary amounts to the equivalent of $75, barely enough to survive, but the end payments are supposed to accumulate and should be several hundred dollars. Not much, but enough to start a small business and get out from under the slave conditions of tenant farm work. After eight years of long hours and hard work, this man and his family of 5 children have been given 5 days to clear out, and every time he has approached management he is told that the man in charge from whom he would collect his severance pay is “away”.
Last spring I became aware that farm workers weren’t allowed to grow food for their families, though they live in the countryside and there is plenty of land surrounding their substandard housing. I could not get a good explanation for this inhumane rule from anyone. I wanted to make this known then. Now that this man has been fired for growing corn, which is “allowed”, I am looking for ways to broadcast the existence of these cruel and unfair practices hoping that publicity will shame those responsible to change and the government to oversee it.
Can we write to the Zambian government to protest these inhuman conditions? Slavery benefits no one but the super rich. Is there no relief for the poor, no desire for fairness? Who cares for these people’s human rights?
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