Thirty per cent are labourers, labour tenants, and squatters on white farms and work and live under conditions similar to those of the serfs of the Middle Ages.
Low pay, forced-labour practices, and squalid working conditions meant the plantations depended on labour tenants, sharecroppers, and migrants from Mozambique and the more marginal north.
The Land Reform Act 3 of 1996 safeguarded the rights of labour tenants who live and grow crops or graze livestock on farms.
Some chiefs, especially in the north, offered their allegiance to the Afrikaners and, with their followers, became labour-tenants on their farms; others moved into the Transkei.
Although fees vary widely at the moment, Labour said tenants were having to pay an average of £355 each time they moved into a new property.
Labour say tenants should have "default right" to pets.
At the beginning of the 20th century the vast majority of Africans in the subcontinent still lived by farming, though in many areas they had become rent- or labour-paying tenants and sharecroppers on land claimed by settlers, syndicates, and speculators.
Landlords exploited their tenants' labour and, after democracy arrived, harvested their votes.
Over the last 10 days, the company has held meetings with Richard Blakeway, London's deputy mayor for housing, Meg Hillier, the tenants' Labour MP, Jules Pipe, the elected mayor of Hackney, and Philip Glanville, the cabinet member for housing at the council.
Over the last ten days, the firm has held meetings with Richard Blakeway, the deputy mayor for housing, Meg Hillier, the tenants' Labour MP, Jules Pipe, the elected mayor of Hackney, and Philip Glanville, the cabinet member for housing at Hackney.
Labour says council tenants need long-term security and that more social housing is needed.
