MamCwerha is a 68-year-old woman with a silky dark skin. But one that does not look her age. She looks refreshingly much younger with glittering eyes. Tall, quiet and measured in her responses. She is among the long-time residents of Vaalbank. So is Reverend Feleva, her brother-in-law, who introduced me to her.

Recently, I had the privilege and singlemost honour to enjoy a silent third person participation in a conversation that she—with her dry sense of humour—was having with the priest, in the comfort of the front porch of her solid granite stone house on the confluence of the Xeketwane tributary of the Qhugqwarhu River and the R392 connecting the rural towns of Dodrecht and Komani.

When she spoke—softly and politely but with a firmly grounded authority—it quickly became clear to me that MamCwerha is no ordinary rural village woman. She is a retired schoolteacher and a great storyteller. Importantly, she is a land steward who is attuned to Richard Maslow’s idea of living in a “more in the real world of nature.”

On the day in question, I listened to her share a few personal childhood stories with the priest. All stories of local people and the places they call home, in and around Vaalbank. But the one that captured my attention and imagination is that of a snake biting her shadow to protect its territory in the grass paddock that she uses to graze her livestock during the winter months.

Earlier, on the day of our visit, as she was fixing the perimeter fence of the livestock grazing paddock, she noticed a very angry snake across the fence line lounging to bite her shadow.Whereas the normal human response to the incident would have been to try and kill the snake, hers was a measured and accommodating approach; one which acknowledged the ‘rights of nature’ including the said snake “to enjoy their habitat under the African skies, free of human interference,” she told her brother-in-law.

That was refreshing and completely unexpected.

Recalling her childhood, the lady with a silky dark skin, reminded her brother-in-law how the surrounding local landscape used to be free from ‘ilapesi’ (Euryops Floribundus), the invasive that has now blanketed the entire district and destroyed much the characteristic grasslands of the region.

Fondly, but with the sound and sign of frustration in her voice and on her face, she talked about watching helplessly as the unmanaged runoff from the annual rainfall continues to erode the fertile soil that the local people so desperately need to safeguard their food security and sustain their livelihoods.

She was at great pains to note that “our attainment of democracy [political without economic (my emphasis)] has failed to change the human condition in our communities.” As she pointed out, “Unemployment is unsustainably very high around here. Crime is rampant. Poverty and hunger are daily norms. Alcohol abuse is skyrocketing too. Poor landowners often go hungry and regularly depend on government safety nets. More painfully, we are losing our children to an epic ‘Exodus without Moses’ in search of greener pastures in the metropolitan areas of our country.”

As she sauntered into her kitchen to make us coffee, her brother-in-law quietly lamented, “That was both mouthful and deeply hurting.” For me, on the hand, it was a constant reminder of how our 30 years of democracy has dismally failed our country’s rural citizens, and how it is now up to the people who live and call Vaalbank home to “change themselves,” as Viktor E. Frankl profoundly wrote in his memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Local people may not be fully comprehending it, as much as MamCwerha does, but Vaalbank’s future is hiding in plain sight. According to her, scholarly peer reviewed literature tells us that before the land-grabbing European settlers ever set foot in Vaalbank, and destroyed crops, her forefathers grew small grains that made them food secure. They grew wheat and processed it into dense nutritious bread. Those were the glory years before the advent of bleached flour and sliced supermarket bread.

Long before maize was forced upon her forefathers, as a staple food for the natives, they grew, processed and ate porridge from sorghum and millet. Strangely, these are now unaffordable (at least in South Africa) superfoods for the rich. Before the factory produced African beer, MamCwerha’s ancestors made the home brew from the sorghum starter called “inkoduso.” Nowadays “inkoduso” is made from maize in industrial factories and sold in local supermarkets.

In the aftermath of my quiet third person participation in the conversation between MamCwerha and he beloved brother-in-law, as I said, I got thinking, this is why it’s in Vaalbank that we should be working to take new bearings and set new directions to cultivate an abundance mindset.

Promoting fresh thinking and learning through doing seems like a next frontier worth pursuing to enable the village people of Vaalbank use what they have arable land, mountain water, grass, good weather, livestock and local labour to provide what they need to live well: economic opportunity, food security, predictable and reliable prosperity, social equity and environmental wellbeing.

And so, as we anticipate the future of Vaalbank, we hope and plan to create a local micro-economy featuring production of small grains and grass-fed livestock as well as it does environmental restoration, and agroforestry. For this is what we keep hearing from the local voices.

Because as James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.” We must confront head-on the fact that reliable and predictable prosperity of many South African rural communities in the former homelands of the Eastern Cape remains firmly in the blind spot of our country human development agenda.

But we also remain cognizant that the daunting large-scale economic turnaround of Vaalbank fortunes begins with entrepreneurship, disruption, innovation and more importantly significant investments.