Sweet peppers, cauliflower, herbs and tomato have brought back a glimmer of hope to the country’s first successful land restitution site, Elandskloof, a rural village in the Cederberg.
In 1996, Elandskloof made headlines as the first successful land claim in a newly democratic South Africa.
However, over the coming decades, the contradictions in a deeply flawed restitution process came to the fore: land without the capital to develop it, and a group of claimants many decades removed from a meaningful relationship with the business of rural livelihoods, carrying the scars of the struggle for survival under apartheid.
In 2018, the portfolio committee on Rural Development and Land Reform raised concerns regarding a lack of progress on the Elandskloof land claim with many issues remaining unresolved.
Challenges included a lack of cooperation between the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) and the Elandskloof community, and housing services among others.
University of Pretoria (UP) Professor Siona O’Connell who has been working in Elandskloof since 2017 - as a result of her research on land restitution, poverty, and inequality in South Africa - said layered onto the community’s trauma has been the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
Together, O’Connell and Dr. Dominique Wnuczek-Lobaczewski from UP’s School of the Arts (SOTA) teamed up with Dr. Kate Donovan and Dr. YoungHwa Cha from the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI) at the University of Edinburgh (UoE) for a project, tilted “Critical Food Heritage as a Tool for Adaptation: Climate change resilience through hybrid indigenous knowledge systems in South Africa” aiming to provide research impact, with tangible results.
The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the UK Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS).
“The Critical projects seek to explore heritage impacts from disasters and climate change, working with research partners in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and South Africa and to develop applied food heritage narratives and a garden that support and empower the people of Elandskloof, in the face of rapid climate change.
“Over the past three years, we visited Elandskloof multiple times. Life on the ground is very different, you realise you really have to start from scratch, they are a community prone to conflict, it’s not surprising given their traumatic past.
So there have been numerous attempted interventions by academics but the community has grown tired of researchers coming, mining information from them but nothing ever coming back.
“The vegetable garden was a good starting point to return to the sands, the soil. The older residents know the land, they know the soil, they know what to plant. We made it clear this project is for them, how they ran it was up to them and it was encouraging for us to see something as simple as planting could bring back hope to the community,” she said.
So far they have planted sweet peppers, cauliflower, various herbs such as parsley, tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce and green peas, in various greenhouse tunnels.
Elandskloof Residents Association’s JP George said despite a history of fighting in the community, they were making progress to find one another again.
“We had a meeting recently and if you look at the turnout of young people, there is very little interest. They are scared because at the meeting there will always be a fight and we get nowhere.
But I can say in the last two to four years we’ve made progress to find each other again and rebuild relationships.
I think we are now on the same page, that we can develop Elandskloof and make it a success with the right help,” said George. He said the project had been a wake up call to the possibility of a new reality.
“It’s something we knew but this tunnel was a wake up call. I know for fact, the idea is that this land we can use for tunnels (to grow more vegetables).
“The fact that something is happening and it's a success that we can see and that makes it different. Some of the plants we want to sell in the shop,” George added.
The turn towards clean energy is an incentive that the Critical project aims to tackle with the Elandskloof community next through the installation of solar.
The DRDLR did not respond to requests for comment by deadline on Thursday.
Cape Times
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