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Sometimes going back is the way to move forward — African proverb
Professor Mvuselelo “Mvu” Ngcoya grew up in Phatheni, an impoverished “middle of nowhere” rural settlement in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa.
It is located in what was a remote “killing fields” epicenter back in the days before apartheid ended, when a tribal power-struggle, marked by violence, terrorized the community which, one day way in the future, would become home to the Bonakude Farm miracle.
“Can I make you a cappuccino with frothed milk fresh from a goat milked this morning?” Ngcoya asks. What a pleasure after my almost two-hour drive from Durban, the latter part if it on a long and winding country road, past forests, through farmlands and small rural compounds.
On my first visit to Bonakude Farm (this was my second), the two hours became three after I took a wrong turn and got lost in a different remote “middle of nowhere.”
This time, 12 months later, my GPS was spot on, even along the rutted sandy tracks that make up the final couple of miles after you leave the asphalt, cross a bridge and start looping and climbing.
It is a scorching late January day. Ngcoya’s wife, farming partner and mom to their two daughters, Linda Lazarczyková, from the Czech Republic, is — as I am — trying to beat the heat. There are comfy chairs on the shaded deck of the home they have built that cling to the top of the cliff overlooking the steep terraced food farm with its tree nursery, worm farm, seed cellar, seedling nursery.
There are myriads of mainly indigenous leafy greens and other veggies and, dotted around in beds, a kaleidoscopic bounty of edible flowers and aromatic herbs.
GOATing Around
Every plant, every tree, every perennial, every seed, every succulent is curated and labeled. Among the medley of fruit trees that produce seasonally are orange trees “with the best-tasting oranges in the universe,” Ngcoya avows.
A couple of coffee bushes they just planted when I was last there are thriving beyond expectation. Roaming in and out of their pens, always searching for something special and delicious not meant for them — then ready to make amends with love and nuzzles — is the rapidly growing little herd of Nigerian pygmy goats, which have feta cheese production in their future.
The Zulu chickens that sleep in the henhouse with the resident marmalade cat deliver abundant eggs, which daughter Halala, 8, is in charge of. The bee hives are way down at the bottom of the valley.
This valley that for years was a trash dump before Mvu and Linda got permission from the traditional council to farm it and in 2019/2020 cleared truckloads of rubbish, then set about the landscaping and erosion control using all manner of crops from banana trees “excellent for holding the soil” to a variety of indigenous soil covers, including edible and medicinal plants. “Our farm currently functions as a farm of reference, as a pollinator, as a connector,” says Ngcoya.
“As a kid, a lot of the food we ate was coming from the land.”
But things changed. “Why” has become part of his academic research. Turning the tide on this and reviving traditional knowledge before it dies out is part of his commitment. The transformation of lives through the planting of new roots for the next generation.
The dominant valley sounds today are roosters crowing and the laughter and chatter of Halala, (her name translates as “a celebration”), 4-year-old Nala, which Ngcoya translates from isiZulu as “abundance, great harvest”, and their little friends splashing in a portable kiddies pool we can look down on that is rapidly filling via a hosepipe.
Going Back, Moving Forward
Ngcoya born in 1973, was two years old when his parents moved to Phatheni after a history, dating back generations, of forced removals.
“In the 1990s, this was a flashpoint of ANC (African National Congress) / IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party) violence. You see the graves. The trauma still weighs heavy,” he says. “It was a place you wanted to leave as soon as you could.” Which he did. “It was not a place you felt you could grow and live and become a human being.”
He left as soon as he was able to and by a circuitous academic route, made it to Washington, D.C., where he got his Ph.D., and taught for a time at the American University. His doctoral dissertation was on international politics and the humanistic African philosophy of ubuntu: humanity towards others often simply explained as, “I am because you are.”
“Doing research on this indigenous philosophy, I developed an interest in other things indigenous,” he says.
In 2010, back in South Africa, Ngcoya took up a teaching post in the developmental studies department of at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. Research on indigenous plants became a focus. This connected him to people working with indigenous food. “And that is how I made the transition from international politics to food politics.”
Like a lot of rural kids, he says, he had learned to work the land. “Begrudgingly! Because this is what your parents expected of you. When you’re not at school you’re outside, weeding, planting and if there are cattle, you’re looking after them and the other animals. But then you leave and you stop.”
He left and he stopped.
That is, until the focus of his research became agriculture and the trouble small-scale farmers have across South Africa, and Africa as a whole, making ends meet. He spent a lot of time traveling to rural parts of KZN talking to farmers, elders with collective memory, who were cultivating indigenous crops.
“All of them would ask me, ‘What do you grow?’ And I wasn’t growing anything. So it became this nagging thing…”
Which brings us back, brought him back, to Phatheni and that African proverb: Sometimes going back is the way to move forward.
The Bonakude Farm Miracle
“Phatheni is my ancestral home. So when my wife and I wanted to grow our own food, it is where we decided to do it.” They called the land they had access to Bonakude Farm. “Bona” meaning to see, to visualise, and “kude” speaking to “far away” as in vision.
“So the way we interpret this is we’re seeing far into the past and far into the future. Borrowing from our ancestors and at the same time we’re not shy to borrow from the latest scientific research to take us into the future.”
Now more and more villagers are being inspired to farm. And not just to grow an expanding variety of crops, which can provide income where previously there was none. But also, young people are seeing hope and life-changing career opportunities that are linked to farming. Ngcoya and Lazarczyková through their contacts and outreach have forged collaborations throughout the province.
Regular weekend community events expose young people to the wider world of possibilities. “We had an artist come and give a workshop. And we had a spoken word workshop. A weed workshop. A pasta making workshop. A volleyball day. We’ve had chess days.”
They set up community soccer and raised funds for soccer balls. “Our after school program offers help with schoolwork as well as activities through which children learn problem-solving skills, develop communication skills and confidence to connect to social and economic activities.”
Mentorship and training collaborations currently have three young women and two young men getting year-long training with certification in animal husbandry. “When they complete the program, perhaps one will come back and set up a small business here. There are a lot of farmers with goats, cows and chickens so there is a need.”
Eleven young people recently were able to spend a week on a specialist farm studying key aspects of nursery management, market gardening and milling “And now people are coming to us from far-away places and the community is beginning to think, perhaps what we’re doing matters.”
Last year they hosted five urban and rural development students from the U.S. Another four “study abroad” students are expected in May. The Saturday I arrived, Ngcoya was just off the line from a meeting with a group of Canadian development studies college students working at being hands-on and involved from a distance.
What they have created in five short years since they started cultivating the land “from scratch” a year before COVID-19 hit is truly nothing short of a miracle. During that time of COVID total lockdown, “July madness” as Ngcoya calls it, it became clear to him that “you need to know where your food comes from. You need to be self-sufficient at the personal level. And you need to be self-sufficient at the community level.”
“It’s only now I’m older that I realise I was a fool for not seeing the resources Phatheni has. And the possibilities.” Possibilities the couple are now working to make real for the youth and larger community, rooted in a belief that to be in charge of your plate is to be in charge of your freedom. Think empowerment, food justice, self-sufficiency, autonomy.
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Organic Beans and Cabbages
From the early days of transforming the steep semi-barren plot they had access to into a soil-regenerated forest of food, nutrition, nourishment, health-nurturing deliciousness, their project has grown exponentially to encompass the village of Phatheni, which sprawls across hills and valleys and has about 500 houses and 3,000 people. Many of whom, Ngcoya discovered on moving back, had the same mind frame he’d had when he left: No hope, no prospects.
Back to my first visit. They were joined by five farmers inspired to start cultivating their plots and growing crops. This created a small network, which Ngcoya refers to as the ilima. “It is an ancient system of support. Elsewhere in the world it’s called work rotation. Here, on a weekly basis, we go to each other’s farms for two hours and do what is necessary. Recently for example, one of the farmers needed a chicken coop so we went and built it together.”
No small farmer can be successful in isolation, he says. “I use the metaphor of laughter. You can have a good chuckle on your own reading something funny. But compare that with laughing in a group. Much better than laughing alone like a lunatic in an elevator. When working with the ilima, we are working. And we are also talking, advising, learning, studying. You’re not all on your own, in solitary confinement.”
Recently, they introduced a food van service. Participating farmers load up their spinach, cabbages, free-range eggs and the likes on a Friday. The driver makes 13 stops around the village for people to buy fresh and local.
“People here deserve quality food. They deserve to eat free-range eggs and organic cabbage, spinach and beans. It shouldn’t be that the rich who can shop at upscale supermarkets get the best and the poor get the crumbs.”
For about three years, Ngcoya and Lazarczyková spearheaded regular deliveries of what they called “naturally grown” picked-that-morning Phatheni crops to Durban, following the community-supported agriculture model. Now, they have raised the bar. “Last December, Bonakude Farm and three other farms we’re working with achieved organic certification through PGS (Participatory Guarantee Systems).”
It is a “farmers checking on farmers” standard recognized worldwide, with farms reviewed annually for compliance. The recognition is a big deal in its own right and because “it means we can add the logo to our produce, so if it is slightly more expensive, there is good reason.”
I was haunted after my previous visit by a comment Lazarczyková made when we sat eating an inspired Bonakuda Farm lunch of pumpkin soup and beetroot brownies. “It’s heartbreaking to see these kids, right now, for example, laboring and stressing through exams, and you know there is nothing on the other side.”
No job prospects and financial restraints (poverty), which manifest in the absence of what many of us take for granted by way of internet access, WI-FI, and laptops, not to mention school guidance.
“For the past five years, we deliberately didn’t apply for or solicit funding. All the work we’ve done here, we’ve done by taking advantage of our networks, providing opportunities for the community via our own inventiveness, bringing people here to train the community for free, sending people from here to train and extend their knowledge. We wanted to show you could start something, set it up, with limited finances (their own). And funding always comes with strings attached, which we didn’t want.”
Change Takes People
But now, having established the benefits for the community, they have set up a nonprofit. They have also secured a tract of land at Phatheni. The intention is to build a resource center. “One of the big things we’ve done since you were last here, we’ve started on a path to formalize our training,” Lazarczyková tells me.
“We have been asked, and see the need, to establish a curriculum and get accreditation through a recognized qualifications authority. So when someone applies for a job they can say, we have this training in agroecology or in sustainable agriculture and they have a nationally recognised certificate.”
The goal for the resource centre, besides being a much-needed community space, is that it will have Wi-Fi and laptops so the youth and other interested community members can tap into the world from their rural roots space at Phatheni.
“Having grown this over five years, we feel we’ve shown our commitment and now we want to scale up so our community can reach the next level and surrounding communities can get opportunities. We’re hoping, now, that we might attract financial resources, given that out here, even simple things, like Wi-Fi, is a challenge,” Ngcoya says.
Phatheni is where he brings his senior development studies students for hands-on research. “The plot where we are farming has become a research site for me also. There are different approaches to development. There is state development, and then there is also the possibility of developmental projects that are bottom-up (grassroots).”
When we chat in the kitchen, Ngcoya and Lazarczyková preparing lunch, they talk about the beans simmering in a stew that’s been slow cooking. They’ve been focusing more actively they tell me on perennial crops, indigenous crops, crops tolerant of varying climate conditions. “There’s this beautiful bean here called lablab.”
What he’s stirring. What we’re having for lunch. “You plant it once. Drought and heavy rain, it tolerates both. You can use it for animal feed. Or soil regeneration.”
You can also braise and eat the leaves, like spinach, I read when I Google later. Chatting over lunch, we talk about their children. Ngcoya and Lazarczyková are giving them hands-on learning and life experience.
“The learning journey of our 8-year-old includes caring for the chickens and learning about how to make money. She goes daily to let them out after they laid most of the eggs. She collects the eggs, wipes them and records them in her book. She tracks sales and bit by bit, is getting an idea how the circle works.” A fun, artistic part was designing her own branding logo.
“Children naturally want to be involved and contribute to the running of the household and daily life and we encourage them.”
Culinary Game Changers
Ngcoya is a trustee of Biowatch, an environmental justice NGO that works with smallholder farmers, other civil society organisations and government to ensure that people have control over their food, agricultural processes and resources within a biodiverse, agroecological and sustainable system.
He was involved in a Biowatch collaboration on a documentary, The Last Seed, an exposé of the devastating consequences of the corporate control of farmer seed and our food system. Via UKZN, I find this video interview with Professor Mvu Ngcoya talking education and transformation and how he uses food as a teacher.
For anyone truly interested in African wisdom, the impact of colonialism and where to now, it is a must-watch.
“What we think sets our work apart here is that we are one of the most under-resourced rural villages in KZN,” says Ngcoya. “But we are a community. Nobody goes hungry here. If somebody knows a child next door is hungry, people chip in.”
There is value in the land. There is value in the people. There is value in the community. Bringing to light this value is part of the Bonakude Farm miracle.
Connect via the Bonakude Farm website, @bonakudefarm on Instagram and @bonakude on Facebook.
