ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the lives and livelihoods of A2 fast-track sugar cane farmers and workers, in the context of the farmers’ contractual arrangements with Tongaat Hulett in Chiredzi District. It provides a detailed account of the productivity constraints of fast-track farmers and the working and living conditions of farm labourers and farm supervisors. The global sugar value chain places financial burdens on Tongaat Hulett in terms of its viability, which in turn conditions its relationship with the fast-track sugar cane farmers. Resultantly, tense and conflictual relations have emerged over, for instance, expensive inputs and milling charges for the farmers. In a similar way, the permanent and casual farm labourers on the sugar cane farms are enmeshed in this web of contested relationship, as it in turn conditions their everyday productive and reproductive lives on the farms. All in all, it is clear that sugar cane workers practise their daily lives, though in a differentiated manner, in deeply frustrating, precarious and despairing ways.
