From the Food First newsletter:

South Africa’s Abalimi Bezekhaya ('Planters of the Home') Stimulates Urban Agriculture and Community in Cape Town

Women in Cape Town are coming together as part of a community garden movement that does more than feed them. The gardens are springing up everywhere there is room, bringing formerly isolated women together, providing them with extra income, and instilling a sense of empowerment. It also provides food for their extended families and others who are sick and cannot work.

This is largely the result of the work of Abalimi Bezekhaya ('Planters of the Home'), started 25 years ago. Rob Small, the group’s resource mobilization manager talks about how, after early struggles women learned to stand on their own feet: "A few years ago the men were saying to the women… that they were being cheeky, now that they were becoming empowered through this movement; and often we were finding group leaders being banished back to the rural areas, with the men sitting in the garden consuming what was left. … [Now] there has been a major groundswell shift, where women have decided 'none of this anymore' – they've chased the men out and they're leading. They are saying men must work in their own gardens."

It has taken a lot of determination to get here. Another group that is helping out is Soil for Life, a Cape Town NGO. Pat Featherstone the operations director says: "There's so much that goes on in these communities that makes it really difficult to garden... in fact, often it's not about growing food, its about growing people." Soil for Life shows people how to build their own gardens and also buys half the produce from the owners.

A typical example is the Fezeka community garden in Gugulethu, where 72 year old Phillipina Ndamane co-owns a garden with five other women. It is about 3/4 of an acre and each women has her own plot, with a community area in the middle—from which they sell vegetables and share the profits. One of the co-owners, Shaba Esiteng, 77, describes the benefits to the larger community: "We are helping the others who don't work, the sick people... people who have HIV, old people – we help them with our vegetables."

As these gardens proliferate the sense of empowerment and community benefits grow along with them.

"These women are my sisters," says Regina Shiceka of her fellow Fezeka gardeners. "They are like family. If you have a problem, you can come and talk to them and they will help you."

"Before the garden we were sitting in our houses," says Phillipina Ndamane… [Now] the garden is strengthening us; it's why we are here every day. I enjoy this garden…. I will carry on till I die."

http://www.abalimi.org.za/


Welcome to Abalimi . We are an urban agriculture (UA) and environmental action (EA) association operating in the socio-economically neglected townships of Khayelitsha, Nyanga and surrounding areas on the Cape Flats near Cape Town, South Africa.

Abalimi means: "the Planters" in Xhosa, the predominant language among our target community. We assist individuals, groups and community based organisations to initiate and maintain permanent organic food growing and nature conservation projects as the basis for sustainable lifestyles, self-help job creation, poverty alleviation and environmental renewal.