For more than 150 years, South Africa has enjoyed a world leading position as a producer of ostrich eggs, feathers, leather, oil and meat of the highest quality.

At its peak in 2009, South Africa accounted for 75 per cent of global ostrich products. Today, the business is worth over 1.2 billion rand (US$73 million) and employs as many as 50,000 people.

But a nightmare scenario could be brewing for the mainly low-skilled farm labourers who toil to rear, slaughter and refine ostrich by-products for export.

South Africa’s exports to leading markets such as China and the European Union are yet to fully recover following a particularly devastating outbreak of avian flu in 2011. Up to 48,000 birds were culled to stop transmission, and thousands of workers lost their jobs as production fell and farms closed.

Although the EU lifted its ban on fresh ostrich meat from South Africa in August 2015, the trouble continued with smaller outbreaks of low pathogenic avian influenza which affected around 15,000 ostriches in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape between August and November last year.

“The 2011 cull, specifically, was a nightmare for farmers. In the panic, even healthy ostrich birds were put to death. Our farmers are still struggling to recover,” says Antony Kruger of the South African Ostrich Business Chamber.

In addition, relatively newer ostrich meat exporters such as Australia are ramping up production.

A catastrophe for workers

As a result, South Africa’s ostrich industry crisis is most keenly felt by the low-skilled and vulnerable workers that make up the bulk of its workforce.

In the Western Cape town of Oudtshoorn, the so-called ‘ostrich capital of the world’, as many as 1700 labourers out of a workforce of 20,000 were laid off from bankrupt farms in 2015 alone, says Shaun Gala, deputy secretary of the South African Agricultural, Food, Fishing and Retail Industry Workers Union. (AFRIWU)

“These migrant labourers come from rural Eastern Cape, over 1000 kilometres away. Sometimes they pluck and sort ostrich feathers for say, 18 years at one farm. They are barely schooled and have no other transferrable life skills.”

Therefore, loss of employment hits entire families, as well as communities, hard.

While ostrich farming is a historically niche and profitable industry, those who labour in it face some of South Africa’s bleakest retirement options.

With low salaries that make it difficult to save while working, retired farm workers usually subsist on a R350 (US$23) a month government social grant. Although better than nothing, it is barely enough to keep up with South Africa’s 7 per cent inflation rate and ever-rising cost of living.

“You will see a number workers earning a pitiful R3000 (US$200) in the ostrich farms. It’s too little and much of it is spent on getting drunk,” adds Gala.

“Some labourers have lived on ostrich farms for 25 years. The farmers practically own them – in terms of monopolising their health, education and food benefits.”

In addition, the work of an ostrich labourer is arduous and dangerous. As well as breeding the birds, workers feed, clean, vaccinate and pluck ostriches, as well as killing, cleaning and preparing them for export.

Not only are workers vulnerable to flu outbreaks, ostriches are also notoriously dangerous birds to work with – the claws and beak of an agitated bird can prove fatal.

Alcoholism is also rife amongst ostrich farm workers – in fact, the Western Cape is home to the highest rates of alcohol abuse in the country.

Professor Nomafrench Mbombo, the health minister for Western Cape, is scathing about the impact of alcohol and substance abuse in her province. “Alcohol ravages our poorest communities, breaks families and disturbs education. It is very expensive to treat abuse and the money runs into R40 million ($2, 4 million). Alcohol is the greatest cause to our disturbing rates of injuries, disease and violence.”

“I am vanishing from this business”

In ostrich farming settlements, generations live, marry and die on the farms. Therefore, the burden of dismissal from bankrupt farms can be calamitous.

“I worked for 20 years of my life grading ostrich meat and skin for export to tanneries in Belgium,” says 60-year-old Siboniso Dala, a former ostrich farm labourer, originally from the Eastern Cape.

“When my employer suddenly sold his farm and moved to Canada, for the first time in life, I was left with nowhere to go with my two wives and five children. The shame of having no roof, education and pension almost drove me into suicide.”

Siboniso says drowned his sorrows in gin and umqombothi [a local] beer. “I feel like I am useless, closing the pages of my life.”

Kruger says farm owners deserve sympathy, too. “The recent EU meat ban and a weak currency handicaps them, too. This is a high risk industry. It takes on average 30 months before money can be found to set up an ostrich business. Local expertise to set up tanneries is difficult to find in South Africa.”

Ian Horrikin, owner of the Clearwater Ostrich Farm in Oudsthoorn, typifies this calamity. “I am a newer entry to the ostrich farm business. The European Union restriction on South Africa ostrich meat products in 2011 wiped off my investment. In 2017, I am vanishing from this business. I don’t know what will happen to the 16 labourers who live on my farm.”