Cape Town — Alfred Ngcizela, a member of Hlumani ("growing bigger") Garden in Khayelitsha, stands between beds of spinach, sprinklers whooshing around him in peaceful salute to summer.
But although all the right elements are there – soil, sun, water and care – the garden is looking rather the worse for wear. "We had no water for many months," he explains. "so the vegetables couldn't grow."
As members of the oldest community garden in Cape Town's townships, the 44 men and women who grow vegetables in Hlumani's soil are fiercely independent. So much so that when their water system broke a few months ago, they started saving up to fix it rather than ask any outside organisations for help.
Considering that all the Hlumani gardeners are either pensioners or unemployed, the challenge of raising the R8,000 (U.S.$1,170) needed to fix the water system was considerable.
But raise it they did. "We collected ten rand from each person every month," says Ngcizela. "Ten rand, ten rand, ten rand….until we had eight thousand rand. Then we fixed it."
With the water system now fully functioning, Hlumani's vegetables are once again pushing through the well-tended soil.
The garden is one of the best examples of a functioning, sustainable subsistence community garden in the region.
When it lost the support of the Quaker Peace Centre – the organisation which, together with local association Abalimi Bezekhaya, helped the community establish the garden in 1994, and provided support and training for the first ten years of its development – three years ago, Hlumani gardeners were forced to see whether they could function independently.
They proved themselves up to the task, apparently through a combination of group organisation, commitment, and the capacity to generate compost and grow seedlings.
The joy Ngcizela takes in his garden is manifest. "I take everything home," he says of his vegetables. "Before, I had to think, 'I must buy cabbage, I must buy carrots, I must buy all these things – I can't do it!'… Now, I don't buy a lot. I buy only a little bit. I am here every day."
