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Report from Terry Leahy November 2010
I visited these projects in the Limpopo district with agricultural officers from the provincial department. I have changed the names of the project sites and the agricultural officers concerned. The original version of this report has been presented to the agricultural officers of the district concerned.
The Ubangi Project
I first visited this project in 2006. Before that the project site was described in a research project conducted by an agricultural officer who was my student in Australia. Mark is still their agricultural officer. The pump was stolen in 2004 and then replaced. I am not sure who funded this replacement at the time. This may have been when they put in the concrete bunker with a thick steel door that now exists to protect the pump. They are now down to 8 members from the original 35, including the chief’s son, the teacher. One view is that he should not be part of the project because he is double dipping as a paid public servant. On the other hand, he probably views this as a benevolent oversight, I doubt whether he is actually making any money out of it.
There are still conflicts in the group, according to Mark. He says the chief’s son is the problem, because they do not feel they can disagree with his decisions. His latest disaster was to contract someone to run the pump. Note that this means that the beneficiaries cannot handle this technology themselves! The contractor took it away from their excellent borehole and placed it next to the river to pump directly from there. However, it rained heavily and the river came up and swamped the pump, which now does not work. By doing this, the contractor had also removed the pump from the concrete bunker and put it somewhere it could have been stolen. They were lucky this did not happen. Mark then took it away to the agriculture department workshop where it is still sitting. I think this happened last year (2008-9 summer). So this year they have only planted a small half hectare for rain fed cropping (maize, watermelons, squash, cow peas). They cannot afford to pay for the pump to be fixed. It is R800 [about AUS$133]. They spent R200 on ploughing this year, so clearly they could afford that small amount. This is a typical situation in so far as the agriculture department has already funded the project with their original pump, fence and borehole and the view is that the project beneficiaries should by now be able to pay for any maintenance with profits they have earned from their use of the site – by growing vegetables and marketing them. But of course this is not the case for two reasons. A lot of what they grow is eaten directly rather than sold. Any money that they do receive is likely to be spent on immediate necessities.
According to Mark, they used a very large part of the site for vegetables (carrots etc) from 2006 – 2009 when the pump was working, but now they cannot. They “ate” the money from the vegetables. Since I was here in 2006, they have abandoned the plastic tanks on high stands and the department has installed a large concrete reservoir.
I ended up putting in R400 towards the pump repair and my friend, another agricultural officer, put in another R100. He gave them a lecture about doing the right thing with the money.
Comments:
I think a huge problem in designing projects in South Africa is that project designers and even villagers themselves never see the problem as food insecurity pure and simple, and projects are rarely designed to be the most efficient way to relieve food insecurity. Instead what gets constantly noticed is the absence of cash and jobs. The expression, “eating the money” implies the necessity of money to eat. It is assumed that the problem is insufficient cash to buy food. So all efforts are devoted to projects like this because they promise to provide money to the poor and at the same time to provide food. Of course the food that these project might provide would only be available to people in villages who can afford to buy it.
Mark wants them to start a funding plot in the middle when they start up again after the pump is fixed. The idea is that this plot would produce stuff they would sell and then bank the money to pay for diesel, repairs, someone to run the pump and so on. I am very sceptical about whether this can work. To me this is a classic case of why projects fail. These are 8 very poor women who can hardly speak a word of English. They do not even have the skills to run their own pump.
My view of this project is that the only way it can work in the long term is if the agricultural officers organize funding and repairs to the pump and hire the contractor to run it! And pay for all this. The beneficiaries will never do it. This would be a form of cheap welfare for people who want to work. It would be a kind of mini work for the dole project for these women. It would improve nutrition and assist income.
The Kithui Project
This village has two projects. I am told there are 120 beneficiaries for the first project and there seem to be about 20 for the second.
The first project:
The first project was started in 1997 in response to a situation where villagers had gone up the side of the mountain (the Drakensberg range) and cleared an area to plant crops. Because it was newly cleared, the soil up there was really good. It took about half an hour for villagers to walk there. They abandoned their fields in the gully and flats because the soil had become exhausted. The first project which is still going was to replant this hillside with fruit trees and to bring the villagers down to the creek flats again to do their cropping.
What they have is a dam which leads to concrete irrigation channels. I am told this was installed before 1997 – some of the structures look quite old. They have a committee that meets regularly (each fortnight?). The main task that they have as a group is that the committee decides on days of water allocation for each cropping field and the Induna (the local village headman) backs up the meeting decisions and deals with offenders. Note that this is not about pooling any kind of income.
Each beneficiary has their own cropping plot. They are growing sweet potatoes, maize, beans, chillis, kale. They also eat black jack (Bidens pilosa), throwing away the water, and amaranth, not throwing away the water. Not throwing away the water is better if you want to keep the vitamin A – you should drink the water. But apparently black jack tastes bad if you do not do throw out the water. Throughout the fields are belts of mature mangoes. They also planted them on the hillsides as they left that site. They are bought green for R15 per kilo to make archar locally. They grow bananas too.
In the fields I was introduced to a mother and daughter. She was 18 and in year 11 and the mother looked about 60. I asked the daughter why she was doing this when most young people are not interested. She said that she wanted to learn everything from her mother. They both said they loved doing gardening and agriculture. They had a thermos and were in the shade of the mangoes drinking cups of tea.
Comments:
This project is working because
• they pay nothing for the water,
• the department has constructed a really good cattle proof boundary fence,
• it is good soil,
• they each look after their own fields and make decisions about what they are going to do as households, rather than as a group,
• there is no pressure to grow food for sale because they do not need to pool any money to maintain this infrastructure,
• the Induna is supportive.
The second project:
Outside of this fence is the grazing area. Here the second project is trying to remove alien weeds. They are concentrating on lantana and guavas. A main reason is to increase pasture on this river flat surrounds. They are cutting the lantana stems and spraying them with roundup. They also cut up the lantana bush itself. Why not use a paint brush to paint the cut stumps of lantana, it is safer and more effective than spraying, which releases roundup into the environment everywhere? My suggestion is to try using a wire strainer for fencing to pull the lantana bushes out. This is quick. You do not slash away the bush first but just get underneath to find the stem and attach the wire round the bottom. You attach the strainer to any strong tree nearby. If it breaks just paint the stump with roundup, but mostly it will come out along with most of the roots. There is no easy solution to lantana coming back from roots left in the ground. You will not stop this with herbicide. It needs constant maintenance every few weeks in the growing season.
There are a lot of new lantana sprouts from roots in the area that they did a year ago. They say they are getting back to that. This is an EPWP project (an employment project funded by government). The ones being paid to do the weeding are not the local farmers and are mostly young men.
Comments:
The local farmers are not being trained in how to maintain the clearance after this team has gone. The lantana will be back in about 3 years after this team has finished its employment. Maintaining this area can easily be done by old people. They need to learn to distinguish lantana shoots from those of the indigenous and other species coming up. The smell is distinctive.
In a lot of cases in this project, this clearing of lantana is going on in zones which are in the cropping field area and are too steep for cropping. They are clearing right down to the gully bottom and exposing soil that will wash away.
What I am recommending is that these areas within 50 metres of the gully be maintained as an indigenous forest which is the logical way to go as there already are some indigenous species left. It is too rocky and steep to plant food crops other than trees. They need this biodiversity reserve for birds to maintain insect control in the fields and to provide food for wild animals so they are less likely to invade the gardens. Just let the regrowth come up and keep removing the lantana while it is still very small.
The soil quality of the cropping fields can be improved radically using Mucuna pruriens or some other legume intercrop – such as Dolichos lab lab, Msangu (Faedherbia alba), Sesbania or Leucaena. The agricultural officer I spoke to said this would have to be done by the soil science division, and there seemed to be no way he could get the seeds. The women I spoke to asked me to send them some seeds so they could try it. This is an urgent task for this project. They need to grow some seeds and save the seeds to multiply them. This should be done on the site so people are taught how to do it. Then they need to trial the legume intercrop with maize on a portion of someone’s field to show that it works. The methods for all this are in the appendix of “Permaculture Strategy for the South African Villages” (also see pictures in the Technology 1 and 2 powerpoints).
This place is like a paradise, it is Edenic. I was told they get 600 mm but it seemed wetter. Maybe that is all the irrigation that is being used.
The Mtungutungi Project
This was a sad business. The grazing land has been surveyed by the veld management experts who recommended a boundary fence, de-bushing of sickle bush, and division into four grazing camps.
Yet this land includes a huge erosion gully and a creek through it that runs quite a lot. Even now, the ground is damp. In the floods of 2000 an earth dam washed away and has not been replaced. This creek bed makes a large part of this grazing area the ideal site for people to do cropping agriculture. It would be easy to irrigate from the stream or to set up contour bunds and diversion bunds to soak this water into the ground. And yet the cropping fields are on the other side of the village where there is no water supply. This is crazy.
The cattle farmers will do nothing unless they are offered jobs. So the department gave them a job to put in the boundary fence in 2008-9 – it is 10km. It is still in good condition but the villagers have not kept the gates maintained and no one shuts them. One gate has been stolen by neighbouring villagers and not replaced. So at present this fence is having little effect on cattle movement. The scheme to build this fence seems to have been just a job creation exercize since it is not being used for any purpose.
The cropping field is in a dry area on other side of the village. The result is that people want to crop here where they can get some water to irrigate. They are invading the area which is theoretically reserved for grazing but in fact dominated by a thicket of sickle bush. These vegetable growers put a light weight pump in the creek bed to pump from the creek or even dig a hole in the creek bed to create a pond and pump from that to vegetable fields. These vegetable fields are carved out of the thicket of sickle bush which is predominant. So the surrounding sickle bush forms a living fence around the vegetable plot. At present these sites are being grazed (during winter) but later on they will be planted. They grow carrots, tomato, cabbage, spinach. Just what the department is trying to establish in so many other village sites without success. One guy has a whole tomato business flourishing now, inside the boundary fence erected for cattle.
The department has now put in a borehole, a big concrete tank and a cattle trough and they are intending to pipe water to other troughs in the four seasonal camps, which are still to be constructed. The officers said an advantage was that children could go to school and not have to herd the cattle. But actually to get maximum growth from the pasture they need to keep their whole village herd together within these four grazing camps and herd them to a new spot every few days (see my powerpoints on cattle). Just dividing the land up into four camps and moving the cattle seasonally is not going to solve these problems. They will still need herders.
The other group causing trouble are the people coming onto this veld to collect firewood. This village as a whole is a typical degraded site with little firewood and all young trees that could become large suppliers of timber constantly pruned for firewood when they are less than a metre high. The villagers had told the agricultural officers that they would not need this wood if they had electricity. But now that it has been connected they say they cannot afford it for cooking. This is absolutely true. In the distance is a commercial private farm with a huge stand of mature trees at least 100 metres high. These show that it would be possible to produce an adequate supply of wood sustainably and maintain a rich woodland, if the right fencing and agreements between villagers were set up to allow this.
The agricultural officers see the crop and vegetable farmers as intruders onto the designated grazing land and have a similar view of the people who are coming onto the land to collect firewood. These people are using the grazing land for purposes which are not intended by the department. They are not likely to maintain the boundaries of the external or internal fence and will leave the gates open, or steal fencing materials.
The dongas (erosion gullies) have to be seen to be believed. The reluctance of the cattle farmers to do anything without money means they are waiting to do the de-bushing and internal fencing and the extra troughs. Neither of the two intruder groups (the vegetable growers and the firewood collectors) has any motive to close the gates. The cattle owners themselves are running their cattle throughout the village streets anyway so they have no motive either – why restrict their cattle to the area fenced off as grazing land when they can get access to the village residential area as well?
The plant of the department is that will be four grazing camps constructed with internal fencing and the size of these four camps will depend on their carrying capacity.
Comments:
It amazes me that the veld scientists have not considered the difficulty of implementing this plan without the cooperation of the rest of the village! The chief is not very strict in enforcing the ban on cropping in this grazing area or on soil mining – well surprise me! In my view the cattle farmers are not that serious about doing anything about these issues. There is no point in helping people who do not want to help themselves. These cattle farmers are not really seeing any of the problems identified by the scientists as real problems for them. They are happy to allow the bushing to invade the pasture and just move their cattle to go around this problem without organizing themselves to expand their pasture. It is madness to be paying cattle farmers to do their own fences and de-bushing. These cattle owners are a minority of the wealthiest, those with most cattle owning more. The poorer villagers are the ones doing cropping and collecting wood. Why this project is oriented to the needs of cattle farmers is beyond me. I would suggest a radical re-orientation of this project to prioritize the needs of the poor in this village.
A new project design
The outside fence should be removed bit by bit and the posts and wire used to create a large (4 hectare) site for trees, protected from goats so villagers have enough wood, and planted with Acacias, Sesbania sesban, Albizias, Mesquite or whatever will grow very quickly and put nitrogen into the ground. Other options are silky oak (Grevillea robusta) and whatever is growing so well on the commercial farm next door. There are plenty of indigenous species coming up in the veld at present and, protected from goats and wood cutters, these indigenous species would themselves grow in time to provide this resource. This area should be out of bounds for wood collection for a five year period. This has to be worked out by the whole village meeting together and agreeing on it.
The other thing to do is to help the vegetable growers with fencing materials to complement their sickle bush live fencing – gates etc. They should also be assisted with green manure and cover crop technology to improve soil fertility. The intrusion of villagers onto this land for cropping should be encouraged and a gradual exchange of uses between the two areas envisaged. The area without a stream running through it on the other side of the village is ideal for grazing whereas the area that is now designated as grazing would be better used for cereal, vegetable and tree cropping – making use of an available water supply.
A good addition to this area would be the construction of permeable dam across the main gully running through this area. For example about 100 young men with eucalypt poles and ropes could carry a whole lot of large stones from the village where they are lying in the streets, to create a permeable dam in the main donga, with an earthen bund extending as a spreader bank into the river flat. It could be about a metre above the level of the main channel and would then extend as a spreader bank into the fields on the contour – about 500 metres in each direction. A swale/ditch of about 0,75 metre deep and 4 m wide with a similar size of bund would do it.
You do not need gabions with these very large rocks – four people with two poles could carry one rock each – you need about 1000 probably. Next time there is a flood this water would spread out and fertilize this whole plain and improve the prospects for every kind of agriculture – wood, pasture, vegetables, cereals. This would be a good EPWP project – there would be no maintenance required once it was well done. (See diagrams and pictures in the technology power points on these structures)
The ideal place to put the wood lot would be just below and above this – to keep cattle off these spreader banks and bunds.
Issues of project design
What is happening now on this site is a good example of the (bad) idea that the behaviour of the villagers has to be adapted to fit the project. The cattle project, the fencing and the four grazing camps and the de-bushing all depend for their success on a radical change of behaviour on the part of the local villagers. Some of the villagers are to stop collecting wood and growing vegetables on the grazing land. Others, the owners of cattle, are to stop grazing their cattle anywhere, but instead herd them within four designated grazing camps. They are also expected to pay for and maintain the pump and the borehole. It is completely unlikely that these cattle farmers will actually do this.
As stated above, the whole of the grazing area should really be moved to the other side of the village. Having done this it would make sense to establish four seasonal camps within this new grazing area. Ideally, in any season, cattle would be moved every few days as a herd, within the grazing camp for that season. This is the most effective method of improving pasture. But there is a reluctance to embrace any solution like this because it would mean that the whole village herd would graze together. But this is not wanted – those who buy expensive bulls do not want the others getting a free service for their cows. There would also have to be a grazing management of goats, to ensure that they were herded along with the cattle and were kept out of the other agricultural areas – the woodlots, orchards, cropping areas. These huge changes in cattle management seem very unlikely to come from a group of cattle owners who are not even motivated to clear the sickle bush that is reducing their pasture.
This project is depressing in its futility and expense. It is also immoral in being about depriving the poorer villagers of their resources (firewood, arable land that can be irrigated) on behalf of the wealthier villagers who own cattle.
My basic suggestion is to create an alternative project that works on activities that the villagers are already engaged in (gathering wood and growing vegetables) and developing strategies to assist that. The key is that the villagers have to want the change enough to do the work themselves to implement the changes – without being paid for the job. The current project is designed by agricultural scientists to create a new cattle management system by paying cattle owners to do the necessary work. Yet it does nothing to change the social behaviour that goes along with current practices – grazing the cattle at will anywhere there is some feed; collecting firewood anywhere; growing vegetables in the grazing area.
The motto for agricultural work in the villages: Adapt the project to fit the behaviour, do not try to do the opposite, it will never work.
I was told that when the agriculture department sends someone to be instructed in pasture management and they come back to the village to implement it, the others who do not want to change say. What are you doing, bringing this “apartheid stuff” here? In other words, to them the fall of apartheid means that you are free to do what you like and do not need anyone to set up systems of control on your actions. Cattle owners with this viewpoint are not really ready for pasture management. Something else should be done in their villages to improve production in other aspects of the subsistence agriculture system – the fuel wood, the cropping or the home stands. Nothing should be done to assist cattle owners until they are ready to hold meetings and agree on what to do and are prepared to volunteer their own labour to do it.
The Ntoroka Project
Here, the department paid the beneficiaries to put in the fence after instructing them and supplying the materials. They have fenced 12 hectares. The project is on the other side of the village from the grazing and cropping land so it is not likely to be vandalized to open it up for grazing by village cattle. But this could happen if the cleared land (and new pasture) is not used very soon. The area being used for the project was so heavily bushed with sickle bush that there was no grazing on it. As a result, there is no section of the village community that regard the land for this project as having been stolen from them, and from some other use.
After being paid to put in the fence, the beneficiaries then went ahead and de-bushed about two hectares themselves, without any further payment. This is a good indication that they are serious about making the project work. These are beneficiaries who are worth the effort. To get rid of the sickle bush they cut the stem and use herbicide.
In May, the electricity was connected to the bore and the pump house (a thief proof structure but also almost impossible for anyone to open). Then Eskom did not actually finalise the electrical work and get it working. They have a big concrete tank in the field for water but of course nothing can be done until the pump and electricity issues have been sorted out. There are 8 beneficiaries. Eskom made them travel to the district capital to finalise the arrangements but this trip was to no avail – the electricity is not connected and the pump is still idle.
Comments:
Only a small group of villagers are actually getting a benefit after a considerable amount of money has been spent. The aim is a commercial project where they sell vegetables so that they can save the money to pay for electricity and maintenance on the pump. It is unlikely that they will actually save money from any sales. Numerous other failed projects of a similar kind should have by now made it quite apparent that this strategy cannot work. The markets for produce from this communal plot are also uncertain. This project is not designed to improve the productivity of the cropping fields, grazing lands or homestands of this village, all of which are being used for subsistence agriculture and could benefit from some input of training, advice and materials. Instead it is set up to provide a small commercial benefit to only eight beneficiaries.
The only way this project can work is if an agricultural officer takes it as their job to liaise directly with ESKOM both now and for the foreseeable future. It is quite clear that the village beneficiaries do not have the authority or knowledge to manage this bureaucracy to ensure that electricity is available for their pump.
For this project to actually work, the money necessary to pay for the electricity and maintenance of the pump would have to be an ongoing payment from the government so that this water would be free of charge. The beneficiaries will never manage to actually save money and pay for the maintenance and electricity themselves, they will always eat the money. What the beneficiaries could be expected to maintain is the poly pipe from the dam to their own plot (about 50 metres) and the sprinkler for their own plot. This could be supplied initially but maintenance could be paid by those involved. This would be a financial contribution that would demonstrate determination to make the project a success but which would not be beyond the organizational and financial resources of the villagers.
To ensure the continuing fertility of this cropping land, a system of rotation with a legume crop being planted every few years would be ideal. The agricultural officer would have to explain this system and get a green manure and cover crop started. There is plenty of room to rotate vegetable plots annually and plant a cover crop in each plot every few years. The beneficiaries need to be taught seed saving so they are not dependent on cash to purchase seeds. They should be advised to concentrate on easy and indigenous vegetables – African kale, pumpkin, watermelon, peanuts, squash, amaranth, jews’ mallow (Corchorus olitorius), black jack, cow peas, Moringa oleifera. The intercrop for fallowing could be Dolichos, Leucaena, Pigeon Pea or Mucuna. What is also necessary for continued fertility is a system of composting using kraal manure from the village. To supply vegetable matter for this compost the ideal material would be branches from useful legume trees – such as Leucaena, Albizia, Senna, Acacia, Sesbania and the like. The agricultural officer would have to assist in setting this up, creating a nursery and sourcing the seeds.
They do not need any kind of cooperative that has a bank account to run this project effectively and would be better off without one. A weekly meeting to sort out issues would be valuable and could initially be organized by the agricultural officer. Each plot should be run by the household in question.
12 ha is a lot of fencing to maintain. 2 ha would have been a lot more sensible for this project. If there is vandalism of the fence, they should cut back to this smaller size and distribute the left over wire and posts in the village. Also, all supplies of materials to repair the fence must be provided if necessary. The beneficiaries cannot be expected to supply fencing wire and posts to repair or replace fencing.
The home-stands and cropping areas of this village should also be fenced (by their owners with materials provided) as soon as possible – if the fencing around this project is not to be stolen. In other words, to make this small commercial project work, you actually have to tackle the key problem for all village householders using their home stands for subsistence agriculture; the fact that they cannot afford fencing to keep goats and cattle out of their home stands. If you do not provide free materials to householders for their home stands, the inevitable outcome is that the fencing that has been supplied to the project will eventually be stolen and the beneficiaries will not be able to afford to replace it. This issue is ubiquitous in South Africa.
To avoid theft and vandalism if the site does eventually produce a good harvest of vegetables it could be necessary to see to security issues. For example the department could construct a house for a caretaker, rotating different beneficiaries as guards every week.
The Msambia Project
This village has been picked to provide a comprehensive rural development programme. It has been endorsed by Zuma as a presidential pilot programme and a lot of money is going into the project. As will be noted, it is an encouraging development in so far as backyard food gardening for food security is included as a key part of the project, along with a number of commercial enterprises which I will consider first.
As you make the turn off to the dirt road to the village the sign says “Make Poverty History”.
This whole project was developed by a consultant, Raoul, who got the contract from the Department of Rural Development in Limpopo. The provincial department of agriculture was not consulted despite the fact that this rural development is almost entirely an agricultural development. The local village development council was also not consulted.
Part one: The vegetable project at the end of the village.
You drive from the macadam road to the village for about 20 minutes and then through the village. On the other side, near to the river flats, the vegetable project has been established.
For this project, the consultant got a loan of R1.4 million. However, it seems very unlikely that they will be able to actually earn enough from growing tomatoes and other vegetables to pay this back. They have a big concrete reservoir to store water. There is some doubt about water provision. One problem is that they need to use a lot of electricity to pump this amount of water but the supply is uncertain and expensive. Another is that they have put in three boreholes to supply water which indicates that there is a problem with the amount coming out of the bores.
The extensive use of water which this project in all its various parts entails is unlikely to be supported by the aquifer – the water table will probably drop quickly.
There are 33 beneficiaries. The beneficiaries have picked a great number of tomatoes at the moment which are sitting in bags. The question is, will they be able to market all these.
Comments:
This kind of group project could run well so long as there is a manager who effectively functions as the boss or employer of the beneficiaries. The minute they have to run it on their own, it will fail. The cost of continuing support from a boss must be factored into the project as part of the cost. This is expensive because it is a long trip from Giyani and the manager would have to be there at least every two days for four hours. The manager must have the power to sack beneficiaries, though a process of consultation with beneficiaries to organize work is also essential. See my paper on Reviving Coops for more detail about this.
It seems unlikely that this site can provide a permanent full time income for more than about 6 beneficiaries. 33 is ridiculous.
This and the three other commercial projects arranged for this site are only going to employ a small number of villagers altogether, even with the inflated numbers of beneficiaries that they now have in this initial phase. This has to be balanced against the large cost of setting up such enterprises, especially if they fail and do not make a profit in the long term. It is unlikely that the R1.4 million will be paid back and this will only happen if there is strong and ongoing managerial control until this money has been repaid.
It is hard to know what to say about the water and marketing problems.
Without a market that is organized in advance to receive the crop, and transport arrangements in place to take it to market, the project cannot succeed commercially. Again, these are costs that must be factored into the business plan for the project. The organization of this arrangement is absolutely something that will have to be handled by a manager, for the foreseeable future.
Competition in the tomato growing business is intense in this province. Not too far away there is an enormous commercial enterprise irrigated with a much more assured water supply, situated on a paved road and having the best mechanization, science and management.
As far as water is concerned, detailed discussion with the project manager and engineers would be necessary to assess this issue.
So far this is a classic case of the entrepreneurial cooperative model (as discussed in my book), and unless it is moved rapidly towards the model of a state farm, it cannot succeed. The other problem is that there has been a lot of money spent on this – especially if the loan is not paid back, yet it seems unlikely to be able to employ many villagers even if it works. The question to be asked is whether the government is really able to spend this amount of money on each similar village in South Africa for such a small outcome in real employment. The problem is that a commercial project like this seems to be the only way to ‘make poverty history’ because it promises real jobs. I discuss these issues at length in my book. But it may be that a better slogan could be ‘help the poor to live well’.
Part two: The cement bricks cooperative.
This is a little factory which has been set up as a cooperative to make concrete bricks for housing construction. The comments on the vegetable cooperative are relevant for this too. It could work as a business run by a professional manager, employed permanently by the government. It will not work in the long term as a cooperative, run by beneficiaries with no tertiary education in business or marketing.
It too may suffer from problems of water and electricity supply.
Part three: The chicken raising project.
There has been a long shed erected to raise broilers from one day old chickens. Sacks of poultry mash have been provided and 100 chickens.
Comments on the chicken project:
The chickens were supplied before the water and electricity had been connected and they have presumably been sold in the village. Without a new start this project cannot survive.
The problems of a business cooperative are relevant here, but a small collective of four women might be able to run this project and be trained in these skills. Disease control, temperature requirements and the like are all quite complex and ongoing supervision and management of this project must be factored in as a cost. The market must be the village itself. On the other hand, transport for the layer mash could prove a problem. The four beneficiaries should be friends or relatives who can work together and pool resources without conflicts over money destroying the project. Clearly the most likely outcome is that of the Voordonker chicken project described in my book. It will fail if it is organized as a large entrepreneurial cooperative with more than four members.
Part four: The de-bushing and vegetable project at the road turn off to the village.
A large area (about 8 hectares) has been de-bushed with the aim of setting up a second irrigated vegetable project.
Comments on the second vegetable project:
This site is much too far from the village to work. It is a long way for beneficiaries to walk to work on a daily basis. It is much too far away from the village to prevent problems of vandalism and theft. The only way this could work would be to move 4 beneficiaries to the site and provide housing, water and electricity. This would raise the cost of the project considerably.
As above, for this project to work, a permanent manager would have to be appointed and they would have to function as a boss. As above, the manager would have to organize marketing, transport, the supply of inputs, tractor hire and so on.
The number of beneficiaries could not be more than 6 for a real income to continue to motivate participation.
There is serious doubt as to whether the aquifer will support this amount of water extraction.
As above, there is a serious amount of money necessary to make this project function when the realistic number of beneficiaries is 6 at most. It is very doubtful whether the project would even break even if the salary of a permanent manager is included with six full time salaries (R15 000 per annum) for beneficiaries. It could make sense to write off the set up costs as a once off donation from the government but if this was meant to be a loan, then the cost of interest and repayments would also have to come out of the project.
This is a very large site to start with. If the project was to be run by four beneficiaries, without a permanent full time manager, it would be better to start with one hectare and see how that goes. If a manager is to be employed, the large size of the project makes sense, but the beneficiary numbers should still be capped at 6.
Part five: The 300 backyard gardens
As stated above, one of the most encouraging things about the presidential pilot programme in this village is the inclusion of household food security gardens. On the other hand the design and project strategy for this undertaking has a few problems.
Most houses in the village have been equipped with a 5 000 litre tank and guttering. The majority of these have been connected up but there are still about a quarter of the tanks just sitting in the gardens without connection. A few houses have two tanks.
A large number of houses have been equipped with a steel and fencing mesh fence to protect their home stand gardens from goats and cattle. These are strong and sensible fences for this purpose. The extent of each garden is probably 500 square metres. They do not take up the whole of the home stand, which in this village seems to be about 1000 square metres or maybe 1500.
Comments on the 300 backyard gardens:
The main problem here is water supply from the tanks. In this village the water supply is inadequate. Most houses are buying water from those few who can afford to have a borehole. The tanks are not yet full because there has been no rain yet (early November). On the other hand they definitely will fill up.
5 000 litres is not adequate for household supply (for cooking and washing) and something closer to 10 000 litres is a good size. This could be provided if the roofs of houses were extended on both sides with a large patio space – poles with corrugated iron (see appendix of my book for this). A larger tank might be economically feasible if it was constructed out of concrete plaster on a wood (or bamboo) and chicken wire frame, held together with fencing wire. This would be the cheapest system, and would have the advantage that it could be constructed and repaired by villagers, with training and materials being provided by the agriculture department.
What would also be necessary is much more provision of water for garden uses. In addition to the household tank an in-ground pond of about 10 000 litres would be ideal. This could provide water for raising indigenous chickens, for growing indigenous leafy greens in the dry season (a necessity to provide vitamin A) or for raising fruit tree seedlings throughout the year. It would be constructed by digging a hole for the pond itself and digging channels to divert water into the pond. These could come from the home stand itself, from any excess from the tank and might also use spaces outside the yard such as road surfaces to catch and divert water into the pond. I saw an example of a pond such as this in an Eastern Cape village. It should be lined with chicken wire and cement plaster. Ideally there would also be a roof constructed to reduce evaporation and prevent drowning – made with wooden poles and thatch.
The guttering for roofs provided by this project is completely inadequate to receive the heavy downpours of summer rainfall. Gutters should be about 30 cm wide and 20 cm deep. Using corrugated iron sheets bent into a U shape and held with fencing wire across the top is a cheap solution.
Any attempt to solve this problem with boreholes would be massively more expensive than the above suggestions, and would soon drain the aquifer. This problem would be extreme if the number of gardens included was to increase to 900 as planned.
The fencing is good but it is an error to think that the limit of the household food garden is the vegetable or maize patch. To supplement this it is definitely necessary to have fruit trees, and trees to provide mulch to make compost – legume species. These also need to be protected from goats and, in their early years, from chickens. A garden divided in three and including the whole home stand would make more sense. There would be a fenced vegetable patch as now provided, a separate enclosed area in which chickens can be kept, and another large strip in which trees and shrubs can be grown.
The method of creating this fencing has some typical problems of project design in South Africa. The funding allows the government to employ young people to install fencing on each house. Yet the individual households have shown no strong desire to use a fence. The only reliable sign of such willingness to use a fence would be if the householders were to construct the fence themselves, after being provided with materials by the department. Ideally, the agricultural officers would go from house to house, seeing if a fence was really necessary, and providing repair materials where an existing fence only needed patching up. In cases where a household had no fence and wanted one, they could give out materials in stages, a fifth of what is required for the first week. Then give instructions and come back to check the work has been done. And so on.
The present project design maximizes the expense of this project – by giving fences to people who will not use them and by installing new fences where only a repair is necessary. It also does nothing to develop commitment to the idea behind the project. What drives this, it can be suggested, is the desire to get demonstrable results quickly. It is easy to spend money to employ people to instal fencing quickly. However what would make a better project for long term food security would be to start small clubs of villagers who would assist each other to instal fencing with materials supplied by the agricultural officers. This process could take years before it produced as many fences as the current project and the constructions would vary in appearance and might look somewhat amateur. But they would be ongoing and would be maintained and would support food security in the long term, while the present project design is unlikely to do that.
Overall comments for the Msambia project:
The emphasis on backyard food gardens and the amount of money going into this is a welcome change in thinking on the part of the departments. However the commercial projects have the typical problems of project design where this is concerned – unrealistic numbers of beneficiaries, a cooperative that cannot work socially, inadequate long term funding to make a commercial enterprise work and so on. The strange way in which this project has been funded by the new Department of Rural Development, without consultation with the Department of Agriculture is a concern. Surely, some discussion prior to this project being approved might have helped to pool ideas. Nevertheless, the project is impressive in its scope. What might be interesting is for the agriculture department of the district to find another local village with similar problems and institute a project design of the kind recommended above – emphasizing a more thorough and minutely applied attempt to develop increases in subsistence productivity, through improvements to home stands, cropping fields and grazing areas. It would also be possible to institute a new example of a commercial project designed as a very small state farm with beneficiaries appointed along with a permanent manager. Can such an organization make a profit? The suggestions included above should be made use of along with my book and other writings – for example the paper called “Smoothing out the bumps in food security”.