Siwaphiwe Myataza - Mzantsi
Collecting firewood as teenage girls was once an exciting task in Nqadu Great Place, Gatyana in the Eastern Cape.
After we had wood tied up, our energy would all go into picking some fruit to eat on our way home.
From mulberry, raspberries, apples, grapes and strawberries, we got those fruits free from the uncultivated trees we had in our nearby forests.
On weekends, we would have forest dates as friends where we gathered as groups to collect fruits in the forest. Safety was never a problem as long as our older brothers were there to protect us from snakes or other animals.
But the mentality was never to have them protecting us against men like it has become nowadays.
During summer school holidays, we would harvest maize meal and grind it. While grinding, our tiny hands would be placed on the oval stones as we enjoyed this activity as kids. The ground maize would give us a soft maize meal for cooking Umvubo.
When in the early 2000s I started to hear about the terms global warming and climate change, all our uncultivated trees suddenly proved to be mystifyingly unproductive. The Natural Resources Defense Council says global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the Earth’s surface. Normally this radiation would escape into space, but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter.
Then, we would hear our grandparents complaining about how global warming introduced poverty and lack of organic food in the rural areas. They would complain about having to purchase everything, when just a few years back they were able to plough and harvest successfully. They were also able to get their fruit from the trees; meat and milk from livestock and their vegetables from the garden.
I agreed with them.
While we heard a lot about global warming, there was always a lack or gap in the environmental education in rural areas. Had our grandparents been taught on how to navigate global warming and many environmental challenges, and been empowered to take care of their environmental spaces, we would have prevented the damaged environment that we are exposed to today.
Also, while we were told that our uncultivated trees have poor pollination for lack of fruit, I always believed that biodiversity awareness campaigns in our villages could lead us somewhere closer to finding solutions around trees that were once bearing fruit.
Today, we don’t see any consistent food systems in the villages. We have reached a phase in life where climate change and natural loss are posing food security risks in our villages, and we are not seeing impactful provincial strategies to save us. I put emphasis on provincial environment strategies because when I visited a friend at Saselamani village in Limpopo, seeing their trees and fields fertile and yielding good harvest, I was shocked because that’s something we don’t see often in the Eastern parts of the country.
When you go to Nqadu Great Place or most villages today, nothing is the same. Some homesteads are closed the whole year, to be opened during December holidays as people vacate rural areas to look for better opportunities and livelihoods.
The culture of ploughing fields and gardens is now something we relate as a story to our children. Some answers in the fight against hunger and poverty lie with us as individuals.
Our grandparents are no more but we can draw a lot of strength and inspiration from the work they did in not only teaching us about the importance of ploughing fields and growing livestock, but also being able to send us to school with money made from these activities.
More importantly, the government has to walk the talk, and not only focus on their own and come up with effective provincial environment strategies to address lack of organic food in rural areas.
It could be the answer to the unemployment crisis facing rural youth.
Myataza-Mzantsi is a UWC political science graduate and writes in her personal capacity
Cape Times