Page 3 (b) Of the few lawyers practising in the rural areas most have very close social and professional connections with landowners in the district. As a result many of them are reluctant to represent labour tenants and occupiers against the landowners. In its circular no 5 of 1998, the Legal Aid Board states: “[I]n many rural areas local attorneys are unwilling to act against prominent local farmers.” (c) The Legal Aid Board has always paid very modest fees with the result that very few lawyers have been prepared to do legal work on instructions from the Legal Aid Board. This has had the effect that the pool of lawyers from whom legal aid representation could be sought is small. (d) The situation described in paragraph (c) above was aggravated in 1999 when the Legal Aid Board reduced its tariff of fees. Some of the lawyers who were at the time representing litigants on instructions from the Legal Aid Board, withdrew as representatives of such litigants. [6] As a result of the above, very many poor, illiterate litigants appear in court unrepresented. Labour tenants and occupiers form a significant portion of such litigants. There is a need to assist labour tenants and occupiers to protect their constitutionally guaranteed rights. One of the ways in which the rights of labour tenants and occupiers, as outlined in section 25 of the Constitution and further expanded upon in the Labour Tenants Act and ESTA, can be protected is to ensure that their right in terms of section 344 of the Constitution is upheld. This means that labour tenants and occupiers are entitled to a fair trial before they can be evicted and for the trial to be fair it is necessary that the labour tenant or occupier understands his or her rights under the law and the complexities of a trial. Where he or she does not understand, there is a need for legal representation, or at the very least, an explanation of his or her 4 Section 34 of the Constitution reads: “Everyone has the right to have any dispute that can be resolved by the application of law decided in a fair public hearing before a court or, where appropriate, another independent and impartial tribunal or forum.”