Free creche and after-school facilities among Wakkerstroom’s staff benefits.
For Ceres grower, Robert Zulch, increased mechanisation is not the answer. “I want to provide more work for people, not less work, and employing more mechanisation on the farm will mean less work for people who need it,” he says. Zulch, a grower for Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing, is one of the top five Ceres apple and pear contributors to Tru-Cape, the largest supplier of South African apples and pears.
Zulch was born on Wakkerstroom, in the Witzenberg Valley of the greater Ceres growing area, where he still farms today and is committed to improving all conditions for his loyal staff. His father purchased the farm 62 years ago. “We provide rent-free housing on the farm and a number of support services such as free transport to schools, churches and medical services. We also purchased a bus in a company in which the staff has shares. One of the shareholders, who left us recently and cashed-in his shares, received a dividend of R8000. Wakkerstroom also provides a free creche and supervised home-work for children of staff. “Marie Danster is fully trained to deliver a creche-level syllabus who, together with Lena Hanekom, also supervises the older children during home-work time after school. We use a small building on the farm that was once a farm school until the State consolidated a number of smaller farm schools some years back.”
During season the demand for labour is so great that growers need to import labour: “We try to provide our contract staff with 10 or even 11 months of work. This is one of the reasons why we expanded our production basket beyond apples and pears which tend to be picked in the first quarter of the year.
Aside from a strong spiritual support system offered in conjunction with Patmos, a community faith-based organisation, supported by about two-thirds of the region’s growers, Zulch supports the farm’s soccer and cricket teams with the required facilities and encouragement. Alfredo Jooste says they play cricket most Sundays against other farms in the region while Petrus Seneke and Kamohelo Nkuebe are in the Wakkerstroom soccer team.
Kamohelo Nkuebe and Petrus Seneke are in the Wakkerstroom soccer team.
Tru-Cape Managing Director, Roelf Pienaar, says that customers locally and abroad want to know about the positive ways growers support and develop their staff and Robert Zulch at Wakkerstroom is a good example of this. “We take our responsibility for the successful sale of our growers’ fruit very seriously as we know that15,200 people, and their families, depend on our ability to achieve the best price for South African fruit,” he ends.
