Farm workers

Farm workers
I stopped on the side of Durbanville Road (leading to Contermanskloof) to take a couple of photos of these farm-workers' houses. (I'm not 100% sure that they are in fact anybody's homes of course, but there's a good chance that they are.)

Farm-workers are generally not very well paid, so for them often only two options exist: either they commute daily to and from a crowded informal settlement or they stay on the farm at which they work, living in a brick house, albeit run down.

Sadly, years ago during the apartheid era, farm-workers were often paid in wine. It may sound strange, but from what I've heard, alcoholic workers were happy with the arrangement as it fed their addiction, and farmers were happy because cheap wine was easy to produce. You can read more about the lasting effects of this exploitative system (known as the "dop system") here and here.

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