Cacadu is a small rural town on the hinterland of my homeplace: the province of the Eastern Cape. Fittingly, due to its rich history and cultural significance, the Eastern Cape is famously known as the “Home of Legends.”
It is not only the birthplace of the former liberation struggle icons like former President Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But also, other lesser-known legends, like the Dohne Merino sheep and the famous Boer goat.
Back in 1938, researchers at the Dohne Research Facility in Stutterheim crossed a Peppin-type Merino with the German Mutton Merino to produce a proudly Eastern Cape original: the Dohne Merino sheep, a dual-purpose breed for premium quality red meat and fine wool.
The Boer goat was developed by Dutch farmers in the Eastern Cape in the early 1900s. It is a meat goat breed that was developed from a mix of indigenous African and introduced European goats. Nowadays, the Boer goat is a trusted source of premium chevon, worldwide. This brief history makes the Eastern Cape the Boer Goat Nation of the world
When I visited the Chris Hani District Municipality, where Cacadu is located, in November 2023, I was very impressed by the natural beauty of the bioregion. I thought that there was so much to love about the regional Montana-like landscape.
Endless skies teeming with all kinds of beautiful birds. Native landscapes where livestock roamed stress-free. to the landscape. Soaring mountains like Nonesi, Lukhanji and the Drakensberg at a distance. Living waters that run along the Qhugqwarhu River into a large manmade reservoir called the Xonxa Dam, which provides supplementary drinking water to the town of Komani. History that dates back to the pre-colonial times when sorghum and millet were local staple foods. Rich communal cultures that beat in the hearts of the local amaQwathi and amaCwerha people. A diverse heritage of amaXhosa people and the European settlers upon which the future agricultural economy of the bioregion was firmly grounded.
But something was also amiss, and I didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to spot it.
Everywhere I went, I noticed that communal land-based agriculture, which once characterized the bioregion, had come to a complete halt. Whilst agriculture in the region’s commercial farms was moving forward, the farmland in the villages of Cacadu is mostly lying fallow. Rangelands are overgrazed because livestock is no longer herded by humans and it grazes closer to home. Once productive arable land is being eroded because of the general lack of ground cover. The once pristine landscapes have been taken over by the rapid spread of the indigenous Acacia Karoo and the alien Euryops Floribundus (Lapesi to the local people). Poverty was self-evident everywhere that I cared to look.
Since then, during the many Dialogues of Solidarity with some of the people who call this bioregion home, I have heard many interesting stories of home. Last year, one person told me, “For the unemployed young people here, it’s the Exodus without Moses into the metropolitan areas for the equally nonexistent employment opportunities.” For the many families who choose to remain home, life is way too hard—harder than it should be or has to be in the land of the free. Local farmers told me that they want “to farm for prosperity.” But they can’t do it without infrastructure and equipment. Many indicated that they want to reclaim grazing landscapes from alien invasion. One church priest even reminded me of what Wendell Berry once said at The Quivira Coalition’s Sixth Annual Conference, in response to a question about the difficulties that lie ahead in the twenty-first century, “We are not walking a prepared path.”
In the aftermath of my visit, I got thinking. It’s time to roll up one’s sleeve and honour a promise that I once made to Madiba (“former President Mandela) in 2005 after my graduation from the University of Cambridge where I graduated, as a Nelson Mandela scholar, with a Master of Philosophy in Engineering for Sustainable Development. That is to use my acquired knowledge and skills to help those in need, every possible opportunity that I get.
With sensible choices and workable solutions, we can build a better bioregion and make it for the people of the bioregion and the rural places they call home. With simple ingenuity and collective action, we can transform all that ‘dead natural capital’ all around the bioregion into all the things that local people need to live productive lives and prosper.
As Michael Fairbanks once told the US Congress, “Prosperity is the ability of an individual or group, to provide shelter, nutrition, and other material goods that enable people to live a good life, according to their own definition. Prosperity helps to create the space in peoples’ hearts and minds so that, unfettered by the everyday concern of the material goods they require to survive, they might develop a healthy emotional and spiritual life, according to their preferences.”
If the vision is to create bioregional abundance and resilience, here’s one self-determined path to get started with the creation of a bioregional economy and the jobs that will come with it.
Land restoration because as Margaret Mitchell wrote in her 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind, “Land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”
To move forward, we plan to rid the local landscapes of all that unmistakably evergreen Euryops floribundus that did not exist in the bioregion during the 1960s (according the elderly in the community) and transform it into a source of carbon to be mixed with all kinds of manure (source of nitrogen) from livestock corrals across the bioregion and vegetable waste from the local towns to produce high quality compost for local food gardens and restoration of the local rangelands.
Our goal is not conventional farming, but regenerative organic agriculture to fund people and place. We are all about feeding our neighbours instead of feeding the nation. Regenerative organic agriculture that is not just about commodity food production. But alternative agriculture that is rooted in an agroecological approaches to development. An ethical way of nourishing both people and place.
This is an unconventional project with multiple functions: building capacity, cultivating abundance (instead of scarcity), growing food security, increasing incomes, enhancing ecosystem services, deepening education, building social ties, overcoming isolation, changing perceptions, improving collaboration, as well as increasing production through targeted investments and sustainable intensification.
Against considerable odds to fund the project, we are moving full steam ahead with the acquisition of the Te Pari technologies to transform those Eastern Cape ‘originals’ into Merino wool fibers, red meat, tools for regenerative grazing, local jobs, food security, social equity, environmental wellbeing and resilience of local families. In our view, Te Pari technologies is the commonsense infrastructure of the 21st century that the farming communities of Chris Hani District bioregion need for promoting better animal welfare, better recordkeeping, better biosecurity and better Eastern Cape originals.
If you are like me, for the love of the land, the art of agroecological approaches to development and the spirit of feeding neighbours and cultivating abundance, you have a burning desire to leave this planet better than you found it, I hope that you will lend a hand.
