The micro‐politics of paternalism: the discourses of management and resistance on South African fruit and wine farms

Abstract

An analysis of the discourse of wine‐farm workers and owners in the Western Cape shows how paternalist discourse marginalises and excludes workers’ voices —but it also shows how workers can challenge the employers’ power. Traditional paternalism is distinguished by an ‘organic’ conception of the farm as a family, with the farmer occupying, a central position of unchallengeable authority. Today, however, a movement for rural reform is bringing about radical changes informing practice. These changes make authority less centralised and more impersonal. They ultimately bring about a greater degree of worker participation in middle management structures. But they also bring about a vast proliferation of internal contradictions and dislocations within management practice: reform can often exacerbate tensions on the farm. These internal crises offer an opportunity for farm worker unions to get a foothold on the farms, and to build institutions that recognise workers’ independent right to speak. These unions, however, should be seen as only the one step towards the growth of a more differentiated rural civil society.