Cape Town's Quiet Organic Revolution

A quiet revolution is growing in the townships of Cape Town, a revolution based on organic gardening, cooperation and the work of women as organic community gardens flourish in the townships.

The townships of Cape Town, South Africa are home to almost one million people. The townships may be best remembered as hotbeds of anti-government activity in final years of apartheid, however, today, according to an AllAfrica report that are spearheading a different revolution. An organic gardening movement led by the women of the townships and the vegetables being grown out in the open, in community food gardens created on previously unused patches of land all over the townships – Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Gugulethu, Crossroads – with more springing up every year. Phillipina Ndamane, along with five other women, co-owns and runs the Fezeka community garden in Gugulethu, where she lives. She is 72 years old and like her partners she relies on a government pension to make ends meet. The R800 (U.S.$115) she receives each month does not go very far in feeding herself, her elderly sister and the nine children she supports, all orphans. "We can't buy vegetables," she says. "The garden is helping me a lot because we don't [need to] buy the things we grow here – I'm taking some to the house." There are also social benefits attached to the garden. Shaba Esiteng who is a co-owner and 77 says: "We are helping the others who don't work, the sick people... people who have HIV, old people – we help them with our vegetables." Esiteng added: "When I first came to the garden, really, I was thin. I was sick. I can feel that I'm strong now… maybe it's because I didn't have any vegetables. I'm very strong now; I'm eating vegetables every day… [and] I'm getting exercise." "She's fat!" chimes in Joyce Nyebela, 65, laughing. "She wasn't like this [before]; she doesn't get old!" Joyce Nyebela, 65, another Gugulethu resident, is sold on the benefits of gardening: "We come to the garden to take exercise, to move the nerves, to meet people and talk – its better that way." Nyebela says her husband "just sits, eats and drinks coffee," she says in a disparaging tone. "Men don't want to do anything – they just want to eat and talk and, you know, rule you – that's all." She does not want him to join her in the garden. "No, if he wants he must do something, not come to work with me, no. Here it's only women." Nyebela is not alone in her negative feelings about men which are explained partially by the fact that many of the men who have been involved in gardens in the past have had problems accepting women's leadership. "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."