Surplus People Project

While many communities across Witzenberg are trying to recover from floods, damaged homes, displacement, and worsening living conditions, families are still being forced to navigate ongoing court battles linked to housing insecurity, injuries on duty, and the ongoing vulnerability many farm workers face after years of labour.

Today, important matters involving Daniël Kamfer and Oupa Karel and Ouma Sarie de Wee return to court.

These are not isolated stories.

They reflect the realities many rural working-class families continue facing long after the floodwaters disappear, uncertainty around housing, pressure on elderly farm dwellers, medical insecurity after workplace injuries, and ongoing threats of eviction and displacement.

Across farming communities, injured workers often continue facing uncertainty around medical support, housing, income, and long-term security after suffering injuries while working.

Elderly residents who have spent decades living and working on farms continue facing insecurity about the places they have long called home.

At the same time, communities are rebuilding after devastating floods that deepened already difficult social and economic conditions.

We also want to acknowledge the important work of the Witzenberg Justice Coalition , who continue supporting communities, documenting lived realities on the ground, and using digital storytelling and community activism to ensure these struggles are seen and heard beyond Witzenberg.

While many affected community members cannot attend today’s court proceedings because they are still working or dealing with flood impacts, updates and realities from the ground will continue being shared.

These stories deserve visibility.

Please share this post, follow the Witzenberg Justice Coalition page, and help amplify the voices of rural working-class communities facing ongoing injustice.

In solidarity with affected families.

What happens when indigenous knowledge, memory, culture, and lived experience are constantly overlooked in the decisions shaping our future?

Today reminds us that dialogue, peace, and sustainable development cannot exist without recognising the histories, knowledge systems, and cultural identities of communities.

Across South Africa, rural and farming communities have protected seeds, land, water, biodiversity, food systems, and agroecological knowledge for generations.

Yet too many of these voices remain excluded from conversations shaping development, climate responses, land reform, and food systems today.

At SPP, we believe meaningful dialogue must be rooted in the land, in people’s languages, histories, farming practices, and collective struggles for dignity, justice, and survival.

Protecting cultural diversity also means protecting indigenous knowledge, agroecology, land rights, food sovereignty, and the right of communities to shape their own futures.

What would change if communities were not only consulted, but trusted to lead?

FOOD. LAND. LABOUR. JUSTICE.