More than 100 families live and work on the farm where his plot is located. And there are other complications. Raymond says that though he has been promised seed and fertilizer from the government, he realizes the government has no money for such things. Seed for corn, he also says, is hard to come by because the government has taken all the seed-corn farms. But seed corn once grew on the plot where he's now building his house.
Raymond is a bit sheepish about settling on land that once belonged to someone else. He pulls a pink newspaper from his belongings and opens it to an article about white farmers being evicted from their land. "So sad," he says, displaying the article. "So sad." While the white farmers will lose their land and the decades of hard work they put into it, few will go away destitute. Most will drive away with a little savings and their personal belongings. It is the estimated one million black farm workers who stand to lose the most in the country's land reform. Most have nowhere to go. Desperate, many are refusing to allow their employers to leave until they pay compensation.