Poor Black people are invisible.
— Carmen Louw2022
Carmen Louw
Carmen Louw grew up in the northern suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. Louw is currently a co-director of the Women on Farms project, a feminist NGO that advocates for the rights of women farm workers and dwellers in the Western Cape. In the full interview, Louw discusses her engagement with the Women on Farms Project, working conditions in the agricultural sector, particularly on wine farms, and the Western Cape 2012 Farm Workers’ strike. This interview was conducted in English in Cape Town, South Africa.
Watch the full interviewConversation Transcript
Since 1994 laws have changed that aim to improve the lives of farm workers. The reality is farmworkers lives hasn’t changed much since 1994. They still live under the same conditions, those laws are not properly enforced—monitored and enforced. When I started working at Women on Farms 11 years ago, I could not believe, it was—my first thought was, Apartheid never ended here. And that is what we still see. And you get so, so angry. The further you go away from Stellenbosch and engage with farmers, white people, white police—it’s just, it’s that control, that behavior—it’s reminiscent of apartheid times and it angers. It creates just a terrible aggression inside of a person, and you just want to lash out. It is, and also the systems, the police, when you go to a police station to report violations, it’s as if black people are invisible, poor black people are invisible. And once a white farmer, a white, or any white person walks in they get preferential treatment. It’s unbelievable, you must experience it to understand. The barriers that was created during apartheid, it’s still prevalent in all spheres of rural life.
