South Africa Agricultural Journey

Carolyn Lecker winter/spring 2012

An unexpected Africa

I fly into Joburg at the end of August having left a severe heat wave and drought

in Canada. Notably, it’s the end of winter in Africa – but garden sprinklers,

evening chills, whales, and penguins aren’t even halfway on my radar.

The main focus of the trip is split between an eco-village near Rustenberg and

an urban gardening enterprise in and around Cape Town. A couple of days in

Johannesburg is very useful and interesting to orient me for the urban reality in

South Africa.

Tholego, 150 hectares of land near Rustenberg, N. W. Province, is an eco-facility

and learning centre. It includes its own personal conservancy with Mokwane’s

Selonskraal, a holy “Stonehengey” surround still mentioned in the praise poetry

of today’s aboriginal community.

Thlolego: of the Past and Future an eco village

and training centre

I leave the intensity of Johannesburg for the calm and beauty and near perfect

example of the arid south west where cacti and aloe play tag with porcupines

and wildebeest. Also I’ll discover enchanting people, history and a unique ecovillage.

I’m brought here by Stephne Fain. An insightful co-director, she and her

engineer husband, Paul Cohen, are the founders of Tholego. Together with

many from the neighbouring village they co-operatively maintain the goings on

here. There are two young German interns helping out as well as Margaret, a

Canadian. She is fabulous and a right hand to Stephne. She is also a Rooftops

Canada sponsor.

I’m given a gorgeous somewhat adobe, somewhat Bucky Fuller, thatched hutlike

“lekgotla” with a circle of light at its domed peak and an enormous raised

bed, dead centre. I feel very much like the chief’s favourite wife.

Supervisor, Mikal, is demonstrating brickmaking in the yard while also

assigning seeding for the interns. A child and playful puppy dart around

awaiting older siblings for a literacy class.

Between aged trees and under African skies, the architecture of Thlolego is

inspired. The central building houses the communal kitchen, office, and

meeting place where ideas are exchanged and work assigned.

A sprinkler operating is a surprise, but more predictably, the drip irrigation

lines and rich compost heating up, look really promising. I’ve come to see, learn

and add a bit of my horticultural “two cents”. Conservation, sustainability, soil

management and specialty gardening, a priority here, are my thing. Offering a

workshop on specifics in these categories, I’ve noticed the village people in

particular are engaged. When Margaret has a moment from Thlolego

organizing, she takes me to the ancient kraal to experience some magic there.

We return along twisty pathways and hedgehog holes, chancing upon some

perfect porcupine quills.

Margaret at the kraal

Ideas workshop

Margaret & Credo the cat

Nene

Francinah

Nene and Francinah, two key staff members and I talk about local food practices

and share recipes.

It is the people here who have warmed my heart just as much as the exciting

architecture and inventive programming.

Planters of the Home

Indra, the Rooftop intern for Abalimi has been corresponding with me so I know the first

day will be one of orientation. Indra is wonderful, knowledgeable and although a

Canadian, originates from this region.

We head to the Abalimi office where I meet the director of the programs, some of the

teachers and interns and chance upon a comprehensive gardening library that contains

A.B.’s own manuals and teaching guides. Over the next number of days I visit two

nursery/teaching gardens as well as quite a number of garden projects themselves. One

garden centre, once a community kitchen is now abuzz with activity. As we talk together,

people are stopping for advice. Nice to see a young male involved in the gardening

experience.

Blessed with water, tremendous natural mulches, kelp food from the ocean and boer

holes for moisture, gardens in and around Capetown can flourish. A.B. operates 57

gardens, 22 new community gardens and a huge quantity of independent gardens in the

“neglected townships on the Cape Flats”. These gardens with training sessions, hands on

help, and teaching guides are succeeding. Abalimi delivers compost, seeds, and tools

when needed. The notion of sustainable gardens – good for people’s own food, business

prospects, and environment can be a win-win situation.

Abalimi Bezekhaya

abundant kelp, luscious pro duce, moisture mineral rich waters and Indra

Some projects seem more challenging than others. Often placed in wastelands, these

places get transformed into optimistic greenery. Framing schoolyards, community

buildings, and sometimes unique situations, such as one correctional centre - gardening

“mamas” have an enormous task transforming large tracts of sandy soil.

Alternative eco cultivation abounds with Abalimi Bezekhaya projects; a bio digester of

green fuel at SCAGA, the “powerline project” delivers cooking gas. Drum drip irrigation,

flourishes in many of the gardens and a lived in - post carbon eco house at one of the

affiliate organizations SEED, promises true sustainability.

On a project visit through the first schoolground a fallen giraffe, in sculpture, lies

precariously in a gulley between the school and the fenced yard. This surprise is joyfully

matched by pockets of children playing and goofing in the schoolyard around the corner.

Facing the other side of this school is an uplifting green palette of garden plantings for

the kids to come and visit, learn from and enjoy. It’s an extraordinary image; school,

children, lush gardens and shanty homes bracketing the edges.

eco alternatives with compost, planting and compost tea

SEED, originating and still headquartered at the school at Rockland is now a viable

program with 30 teachers at about 15 schools all delivering permaculture education.

Their most impressive recent creation is a homestead model of a RDP home, a post

carbon notion inhabited and situated in the school grounds. A more recent community

enterprise has the Rockland community and school participating in an off the grid

climate controlled mushroom farm mentored by a specialist. The staff’s observation, that

interacting with nature is the best teacher and that through organic growing and

enterprise people can make a better community - applies to Abalimi Bezekhaya.

With the enormous number of willing people in South Africa looking towards a more

hopeful future, the presence of mentors, partnership, and necessity might very well bring

to these deserving people a promising future. Where better for the principles of

biodynamic agriculture to take hold than at the seat of humankind, where it all began.

Harvest of Hope is a social business launched by Abalimi. Their aim to sell their

vegetables, well priced for purchase, but fairly priced for farmers has been a huge

success. It’s the farmers’ hope to feed families and reap a profit. Pack Day is the time of

week when all the great produce comes together in the pack shed. Growers, teachers, staff

pitch in and the joyous overspill of organic veggies in box after box head out.

And So One Hopes