— By Terry Leahy, 2015
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So we were saying, now what are we going to do? So we worked very hard.
— Jessica Chibharo
Introduction
After ten years working on rural agriculture projects between 2003 and 2009, I was aware that most projects in rural Africa were failing. I had finished the book, “Permaculture Strategy for the South African Villages” (2009) in which I had explained what was going wrong and suggested a different model for project design. My model was based around helping households with the subsistence production they were already doing and using permaculture technologies to improve output and diversity. I was keen to see if any projects in Africa had been set up that worked like that and decided to go to the international permaculture convergence being held in Malawi that year (IPC9). At the very least I could promote and distribute my book.
It did not take me long to find the group associated with “CELUCT” project in Zimbabwe, what I am calling “The Chikuwka Project”. They felt they had little exposure in the permaculture movement, even though their project had been working well for decades. About five of the management team came to the conference. They had a poster and leaflets and their book on community mediation. They presented a workshop that began with a dramatized role-play. It was very engaging. I made arrangements to go and see their project in the following year (2010) when I had study leave. As I was talking to them they explained that they were seeking someone who could document their project on film. As luck would have it, my sister, a documentary filmmaker, also had leave in 2010 and offered to come and help me film the project. When we went there we found we had been organized to engage in a hectic schedule of filming, taking in the project in the Chikukwa villages and the TSURO project in the district that had grown out of it (see Chapter Eight). We did masses of interviews for the film and I make use of these in this chapter. As you will see, the project was everything I had dreamed about and more. The film was completed in 2013 and is available through the website www.thechikukwaproject.com.
I am not going to explain the term “permaculture” here (see Leahy 2009 for a detailed discussion). Suffice it to say that this project is an exemplary instance of permaculture and the meaning of the term will become clear as I explain the project.
This chapter is to explain the project, to understand its success and consider the extent to which it could become a model. It may seem odd that a model for the relief of rural poverty could come from Zimbabwe, widely viewed as an economic basket case. An alternative is to view the site of the project as an ‘edge’ location, as suggested to me by Eli Westermann. In permaculture (Mollison 1988) the edge between two kinds of plant communities is regarded as particularly productive, sharing opportunities from each ecological zone. For example the edge between forest and pasture. Chikukwa is such an edge. It is on the edge of a mountainous region, bordering a national park, a pine plantation and the country of Mozambique. It is home to the Chikukwa clan, which has lived in this part of the world for centuries. But also key figures in the project have been people from other parts of Zimbabwe, and other parts of the world, making a social and cultural edge. The slow collapse of the Zimbabwe economy, culminating in 2005, meant that Chikukwa ended up being on the edge of the global economy. This was a crisis that drove experimentation.
The Chikukwa project can be considered in relation to ‘Southern Theory’, which proposes the use of theoretical tools derived from the experience of the global South (Connell 2007). The Chikukwa project is founded on the theory of ‘permaculture’ or ‘permanent agriculture’ developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia. As in Mollison’s canonic book, The Designers’ Manual (Mollison 1988) permaculture has sought to develop a sustainable agriculture adapted to each of the world’s climatic regions, making a break with modernist agriculture invented for the North. In the eighties, Mollison travelled around the world to promote this new vision. In Africa, one of those he met was John Wilson, who went on to found the Fambidzanai centre for permaculture in Harare, a key moment for the Chikukwa project. As a social technology, the Chikukwa project is an indigenously produced solution to African problems. Typical models for rural projects in Africa have been promoted by the World Bank (Willliams 1996) and have sought to replicate the rural industrial take off of the European countries, attempting to build capitalist agriculture, inspiring entrepreneurs and building market skills (Marais & Botes 2007; Ferguson 1994; Mkize 2008). The experience of the Chikukwa project suggests the relevance of a different model.
There are six villages of the Chikukwa clan with seven thousand people. They occupy a 15 kilometre stretch of hills and valleys in Eastern Zimbabwe next to Mozambique. I first became interested in this project in 2009 and much of the data for this chapter comes from the work I did when I went to visit in 2010. In 2014 I went back, spending several months at the project, going around to interview local people, observing the workshops organized by the project and getting a first hand experience of people’s agricultural strategies. For this chapter, I have made use of the photos taken in the early years of the project, recent photos and 35 hours of film rushes from 2010 (Leahy and Leahy 2012). I have conducted interviews with more than forty local people, who have explained the history of the project and its current operation. I have also taken notes from minutes of meetings in the early nineties.
The claim that the project is a success is based on a variety of considerations. One is the extent of the project’s longevity – twenty-four years now. Most projects in Africa do not last beyond several years. The photos show the Chikukwa lands in the early nineties as barren hillsides with only a few trees remaining and erosion gullies common. The banks surrounding the springs are bare and have been trampled by cattle. Interviewees explained that the springs had dried up. They were walking five kilometres to fetch water. During the dry season there was little feed for cattle. Fuel wood was in short supply. Harvests were poor and hunger common. During the wet season, rainwater poured down the hills. Houses were flooded, with silt reaching up to the window ledges.
More recent photos show small farm households, each surrounded by orchards and vegetable gardens. Contour bunds topped by vetiver grass ring the hillsides. Gullies host a lush growth of indigenous woodland. The ridges and some slopes are planted with a thick woodland of eucalyptus, acacia and casuarina species – for firewood and timber. Woodlots and swales take in water in the wet season and release it gradually, so springs run continuously. The changes brought about by the project have been increased yields of cereals, more vegetables, fruits and animal protein in the diet, and accompanying good health. A baseline survey was conducted by the TSURO Trust in Chimanimani District (Takaidza et al 2011), a study of 125 randomly selected houses from five of the wards with which TSURO works. Because the Chikukwa villages are one ward of the Chimanimani district, they were included. The respondents were asked whether they have sufficient food in each month of the year:
Table 1: Enough food by ward
| Monthly Status (%) of households reporting Enough Food | ||||||||||||
| Ward | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | July |
| Chakohwa | 40 | 36 | 28 | 28 | 32 | 28 | 36 | 60 | 64 | 60 | 60 | 52 |
| Chayamiti | 50 | 46.2 | 38.5 | 38.5 | 34.6 | 46.2 | 42.3 | 50 | 65.4 | 69.2 | 69.2 | 65.4 |
| Chikukwa | 83.3 | 83.3 | 79.2 | 66.7 | 70.8 | 70.8 | 87.5 | 91.7 | 95.8 | 95.8 | 95.8 | 95.8 |
| Chikwakwa | 24 | 8 | 8 | 12 | 20 | 24 | 28 | 36 | 44 | 48 | 36 | 40 |
| Manyuseni | 72 | 68 | 60 | 60 | 52 | 64 | 72 | 72 | 84 | 84 | 84 | 79.2 |
(From Takaidza et al 2011: 2)
There is a marked difference between Chikukwa and the other wards. The food shortage the other wards experience is typical of South and Eastern Africa (See Chapter One and Two). Three of the four other wards surveyed in the study have food sufficiency figures that are often below 50 per cent.
History of the Chikukwa project
The Chikukwa project was initiated in 1991. A German couple who had come to teach in Zimbabwe were catalysts. Eli and Ulli Westermann took a post teaching in the Chimanimani district in the mid eighties and were granted land for their house by the chief. They met two other teachers who also became involved in the project. One was John Wilson, who founded the first permaculture organization in Zimbabwe, Fambidzanai Training Centre, Harare. The other was Chester Chituwu, principal of the Chikukwa primary school. Eli and Ulli lived in one of the six villages occupied by the Chikukwa clan, the village of Chiketeke with their two children, who grew up speaking Shona, English and German.
In 1991, the spring which had served about 50 households in Chitekete village for their water supply dried up. This was the culmination of a growing crisis, caused by clearing of the original forest vegetation, combined with over grazing and cropping. Eli met with some of her neighbours and a small action group was formed. Patience Sithole explained the origins of the group:
… at the secondary school my husband was teaching with Ulli and Eli (Westermann). And I became friends with the Westermanns’ family. So each and every day, we could sit down, and if it rains we could see erosion, soil going and so on. And then we always discuss. And then one day said OK, but we have to action. And we began by having a workshop in 1991, at Peter’s place. I volunteered, together with Piti, Peter, Abisha, Eli, and Zawanda.
This group of six, ‘Nuchidza Dzakasimba’ or ‘Strong Bees’, met weekly. Their first attempt on the spring was to dig for water. But with further rains, the spring silted up again. So they organized a one-week permaculture design workshop. They invited five householders from each village, traditional leaders and representatives of youth. Instruction was delivered by the Westermanns’ friend from teaching, John Wilson, with Alias Mulambo. They concentrated on the use of natural resources, especially water. There was another similar workshop in 1992. The group operated in two modes. As neighbours, the Strong Bees met to plan their own household projects and help each other – collecting seeds, establishing legume trees, orchards and vegetable plots, starting nurseries for fruit trees. Secondly, they recruited working parties of local villagers – to fence off the springs and plant indigenous species, to plant woodlots and fence them, to put in contour bunds and swales. As Eli describes it:
So, me, Mai B and four other youngsters decided to do something and we took the hoes on our shoulders and walked up into the mountains and worked with the people digging swales, working at the spring, and people got so motivated and just kind of came along. It was very enthusiastic. After a few years you could see the impact. Erosion was limited. Some areas were already terracing out, after the vetiver contours. So you really could see that the maize was much higher and a bigger harvest. Two or three springs were already reactivated after three or four years of our work. And that was very motivating.
These groups were totally voluntary in character. All work was with hand tools. They brought in a truckload of vetiver grass to stabilize the bunds they were creating. It was propagated for bunds in all the villages.
The methods of the Strong Bees spread to other households. Ulli Westermann describes the process:
Seeing is believing. The home to home exchange was the main tool. And then there were other things like ‘Permachikoro’ – ‘Permaculture School’, which happened once a month. And it was basically farmer-to-farmer training. So you had people who were experienced in a certain thing, they would take that knowledge to the community. The demand came very quickly within Chikukwa. I mean there was so visible success after a short time really that it was just convincing.
The group helped to establish similar permaculture clubs in all the six villages. By 1995, there were training ‘attachments’ to teach the methods being adopted. The group was invited to receive funding from a German NGO (Weltfriedensdienst – WFD). They decided to accept, so long as their community organization retained control. In 1996, to link up the village groups they formed CELUCT – Chikukwa Ecological Land Use Community Trust. Members of the ‘Strong Bees’ club became the management team. With the money from WFD to pay for materials, working parties of villagers volunteered their labour and built the Chikukwa Permaculture Centre – a kitchen for catering, a dormitory, open sided halls for workshops and an administration office. A catering department rostered villagers to provide meals for workshops. A pre-school was established. In 1997 CELUCT started up food processing clubs to process surplus for sale. In 1998 social groups were formed for women. In 2006, following some conflicts in the organization, they established a department for conflict transformation – Building Constructive Community Relations. Local groups were set up in all the villages and people came from beyond Chikukwa to learn these techniques. ‘Talking circles’ were formed to counter the stigma of HIV/AIDS and to assist infected people. Each of these ‘departments’ consisted of voluntary clubs in the villages, sending representatives to the central organization. Sustainable agriculture had been the first and the others had followed.
The new landscape
Over twenty years a new landscape has been established. The elements have been repeated in each of the six villages as households copied other villagers. Each village has a spring, about a third of the way from the hilltops, the water source for the village. The gully around each spring has been fenced off to protect the indigenous woodland that has come back. Each spring has one or more poly-pipes leading down to a community water tank. The tanks have been constructed by community working bees, with bricks produced in the villages and concrete mortar and asbestos roofing paid for by the project. Each tank supplies water to taps in household yards. A water tank committee supervises to make sure taps are being turned off and that the system is not leaking. On the upper slopes and some lower ridges, there are woodlots of quick growing trees. They maintain the health of the springs, store and release ground water, prevent erosion and provide fuel and timber. Some are owned by villagers who cull the timber and leave the stumps for pollarding, selling wood to other villagers. The community makes sure that woodlots are not clear felled.
A typical practice in this region is to burn the crop residue after the harvest. Woodlands may be also fired up to help catch mice to eat. These actions diminish soil fertility and are no longer practiced in the Chikukwa villages. Another common regional practice is to move cattle onto the cropping lands after harvest – to eat crop residues. This compacts soils. Herds of goats are also allowed to range free, destroying tree seedlings. In the Chikukwa villages, cattle are usually herded to grazing areas above the tree line. Goats are mostly tethered or kept in pens. The importance placed on food security, water retention and fuel has meant that cattle (and goats) are not given priority. They have been kept out to prevent soil compaction and to allow food crops to mature. Springs and woodlots have been protected to ensure reforestation.
There is a pattern of design common to residences today. Water from the roof falls onto the yard, which slopes gently to the orchard, next down the hillside. A washing up stand is next to the orchard, so grey water can be thrown below. Utensils dry in the sun, killing germs. This is also the site for the tap. Around to the side of the house are the pens for small livestock, typically chickens (for meat and eggs), pigeons, and goats. Also kept sometimes are fish (in ponds), pigs, rabbits or turkeys. To ensure the orchard is well watered, pits or contour bunds trap water. Often a cropping field next to the orchard will have a contour bund and ditch (swale) running into the orchard. Typical fruit species are banana, Mexican apple, mango, passionfruit, guava, papaya, pineapple, citrus, avocado. Vegetable matter, crop residues and manure go to compost heaps, used to fertilize the vegetable garden and the orchard. Below the orchard, unshaded by trees, is the vegetable garden. Common crops are sunflowers, kovo (a kind of cabbage), rape, amaranth and scrambling small tomatoes – trouble free vegetables. These are inter-planted with legumes such as Leucaena and Sesbania. Weedy, traditionally-used leafy vegetables are also grown and collected (Ekesa, Walingo and Abukutsa-Onyango 2009). The cropping fields are close to the house or on the flood plain that is owned by the villagers. For the fields nearer to the houses, good crops of wheat and maize come from the use of compost and manure and the effect of the contour bunds. Some families have cattle and use them to plough, but many use hand hoes. An open-ventilated ‘Blair’ pit toilet is typical for sewerage.
This system of permaculture design is well understood. For example Gonday Matsekete explains his household’s water harvesting and nutrient strategies:
The change, is very visible. Long ago, the whole place here used to be like this [very dried out – he is pointing to the front yard of his house]. But because we are now using water harvesting, everywhere is green. Runoff from the roof is there. And the water goes into the garden there and it irrigates the bananas there. And some of the crops that are in the garden. And at the back there, there is a bathroom. We have put a ditch there, so that the water from the bathroom goes to the bananas. And over there, we’ve got a swale, which catches water from the road, so each drop that comes this way is used. We were taught to interrelate the field and our animals. So, we take manure from the kraal, put it in the field and the residues from the field, to the animals.
The project has created a lay scientific knowledge of permaculture design through workshops, farmer-to-farmer visits and field trips. This common knowledge base informs the decisions of residents in planning their landscapes.
As part of a model to be ‘scaled up’, this landscape design is one element. An integrated poly-cultural farm has the house as a focus. Sites requiring daily attention are close. The slope is managed to trap water and maximize sunlight where required. Within South and South Eastern Africa, options for this landscape model vary. Yet the elements of the design can still make sense. For example, water harvesting is always required but on flat land, basins and wells would take the place of contour bunds. Much dryer situations can be designed for permaculture, as demonstrated on farms assisted by the TSURO organisation.
The conflict workshop
A two-day conflict workshop reflects community processes. An erosion gully was removing soil from some farms while bringing silt to others. The root cause was excessive timber harvesting. People concerned by the erosion took the matter to the local Permaculture Club and local BCCR (Building Constructive Community Relations) Club. These asked their representatives to take up the issue with CELUCT. Patience Sithole (administrator) from the management team explained the conflict:
Some people were just saying it in their hearts. What are we going to do? This person did this. They were even afraid of approaching the person who was cutting down trees. Those who had participated in the conflict participation program, said, but there, we are being taught how to resolve these problems. Why not sitting down and bringing out this issue.
CELUCT consulted with the local headman and agreed to hold a workshop. Representatives from the local clubs, the CELUCT staff from these departments and the director organized it. A local household hosted the event. The men sat on benches with the women and infants on mats at the front. Directly in front of the house an easel with butcher’s paper was provided for drawings, diagrams, agenda and decisions. For morning tea, the catering staff from CELUCT supplied orange cordial in plastic cups, slices of white bread and apples on plastic plates. These were brought to the venue in the utility vehicle (bakkie) owned by CELUCT.
The proceedings opened with prayer and singing. Then delegates from the BCCR staged a humorous skit representing the conflict. The point was that all had sensible reasons for their actions. No one was directly named and there was a lot of laughter and comments. Following this, all took part in a discussion. Morning tea followed. The men were served first. The delegates from the local clubs and the members of the CELUCT management team, with the exception of the director, took the plates of food and cups of cordial to the seated villagers. After this, there was a shower of rain and the party split into two parts. The men were in the lounge room of the house and the women in a large kitchen rondavel. An action plan was formulated. They would repair the erosion gully with rock check dams and vetiver grass and plant native trees. Further clearing in the woodlot was to be prohibited. The next day the party repaired to a local path for a trial run. Then the whole group moved to the gully. The men fixed one site and the women another, twenty metres further down. All participated, including members of the CELUCT team. The director talked and joked with the older men, occasionally addressing the whole group. Local delegates coordinated the work.
Explaining the success of CELUCT
There are a number of factors that have gone together to ensure the long-term success of the CELUCT project. These create a model of project design, which could well be replicated in South and South East Africa.
An embedded project – embedded professionals
Most projects in Africa are initiated by an outside agency, which sends in a team of professionals (Marais & Botes 2007; Ferguson 1994; Mkize 2008). They are backed by a central bureaucracy. Usually, projects will run for several years, after which the intention is that the community will ‘take ownership’. Typically, the community members are unable to continue. Villagers whose education is barely at a high school level are expected to run a commercial agricultural business. A recipe for failure.
The Chikukwa project is, by contrast, ‘embedded’. It was generated by residents. It did not spring up to receive funds from any outside donor. Full time staff are local residents, even though a number of them have come from elsewhere. At least half of them are locals by birth. The whole of the project is geographically contained so members of the team can actually walk to the villages and villagers can walk to the centre. The formally educated professionals in the management team have mostly been teachers in local schools. Eli and Ulli Westermann were high school teachers in the local area. Chester Chituwu, who is director of the project now was the principal of the local primary school. Patience Sithole who is the administrator for CELUCT is the wife of a local high school teacher. She was sponsored to be trained in accountancy by CELUCT so she could keep their books. From 2010, Phineas Chikoshana, a local science teacher, became one of the project team.
This is all very unusual for projects in Africa. Usually there is a division between project officers, who live in town, and local professionals in the villages. Projects work with ‘the poorest of the poor’, as they are referred to in South Africa, so local professionals are not involved.
Ulli Westermann explains why an embedded project makes sense:
You have to be integrated in the community, if you want to achieve anything. You have to know the people. It’s very difficult for outsiders to quickly jump in, do a quick two or three year program and then phase out. We knew hundreds of students by name, here and that of course makes it much easier.
Chester Chituwu, the current director, made a similar comment:
I was working in the area, as a school teacher, and school head and I was interacting with the community. So when the idea of this organization coming up, we would hold discussions together. Most of them were my former students. And then some were friends. We were work mates, in education.
So the human capital needed to maintain the organization was produced from within the community. What came from outside were ideas and a small amount of funding. The embedded professionals provide links to the permaculture movement, access to agricultural and social science, the accounting skills necessary to secure funding, liaison with government departments and the literacy and IT skills to develop promotional and instructional material. Successful community organizations need these middle class skills to function in the global economy.
This is probably the aspect of the project that is most difficult to replicate. Ulli and Eli, with their connections to the permaculture movement and their work as local teachers provided the nexus for a broader alliance of local professionals. This is a very accidental and felicitous combination. On the other hand, there are people with middle class skills in every village. They are the people who should lead their villages in local food production for household consumption, rather than depending on projects run by people who only stay for a few years.
For food security – not for cash incomes
Most projects in this region of Africa are founded on a strategy of commercialisation, and fail accordingly, as has been explained. However in this case, the collapse of the Zimbabwe economy favoured a food security approach. Urban residents were affected by the structural adjustment programs of the nineties, the economic problems following 1997 and the inflation crisis of 2005. Wages fell and so did remittances to villages. Wages in towns were insufficient to purchase all food necessities and remittances were not available for rural residents to top up subsistence or buy inputs. The long-term effect was to strengthen rural connections.
… plans to engage or re-engage with rural livelihoods had become increasingly prevalent amongst recent urban migrant cohorts, although as urban poverty worsened the attraction of the city for those with any sort of viable rural livelihood had waned. (Potts 2011: 32)
At the height of the collapse, people were leaving Zimbabwe to get jobs paying real currency. Even the middle class was not being paid enough. People left the city to make sure they could supplement their cash income with subsistence farming. The usual exodus of young people from the rural areas came to a halt. The Chikukwa project was the beneficiary of an ‘edge effect’ so far as the economy was concerned.
The basic aim of the Chikukwa project has always been improved food security. Some successful local businesses have come out of the project and the project has also encouraged farmers to add value to their surplus production. Yet the project itself has always emphasized subsistence. You do not need high school maths to improve your agricultural production. The project design avoids conflicts over money. In the subsistence strategy of the Chikukwa project, people produce food for their own household on their own land and no money is required to purchase inputs.
In a meeting of the management team and community representatives, the group was asked how the Chikukwa project had gained the participation of youth, a problem for many projects. The replies emphasized the centrality of subsistence:
Phineas: Our local economy is based on agriculture, we are getting the produce from our land. And when the action group started, it involved different age groups. Who were much concerned about healing the land. So, that they would produce enough to feed themselves. So you will find that what is more important here, is the food security.
Jessica: Our youth have to learn working as young people. And that’s also an inheritance to them. For example, if the parents will pass away, they have to know that we were surviving here by farming.
An emphasis on subsistence should be promoted for all food security projects in this part of Africa. The success of this project shows that this is quite possible, can work culturally and really helps to provide adequate food. The Chikukwa project came out of a situation so extreme that the pressure to engage in commercial projects was relieved. People struggled to put food on the table. This was a space in which the only sensible option for rural poverty in the region could be explored in detail. With suitable encouragement, this solution could be pursued from South Africa to Uganda.
Use of permaculture design technologies
Permaculture in the Chikukwa villages has become a local folk science. Jessica Chibharo (translated by Patience Sithole) explains her garden strategies:
And then after that, we would have small livestocks, and we can pick vegetables from the garden, and feed our small livestocks, and they will produce manure, that manure will turn then to the garden, and also we can use those for proteins.
Permaculture promotes the development of a poly-culture with links between the different elements. In much of this region, subsistence farming concentrates on maize and cattle and little else (See Chapter Two). People expect to purchase everyday supplies of vegetables, beans and animal protein. The outcome is malnutrition. The Chikukwa villagers combine orchards, vegetable gardens, cropping fields and small livestock to be self sufficient in all nutrients without depending on inadequate supplies of cash.
Permaculture recommends organic methods. All inputs are to be produced locally and there is no need to pay for them with cash. By contrast, most projects in the region exhort villagers to buy fertilisers and improved seeds (to little effect) or make promises to subsidize inputs (but only while the project is being funded). The economic logic of permaculture is well understood in the Chikukwa villages:
Just say I want to buy fertiliser. But we don’t have the resources to buy. Why not making a compost? Where I can use manure from my small livestocks or from my goats. Or from my cattle. Rather than buying artificial fertilisers. (Questions Chikukwa)
Permaculture has always placed an emphasis on water harvesting. In the early nineties, flooding rains in these villages washed soil off the hillsides in the wet season. In the dry season, there was no water in the soil. The permaculture technologies of swales, contour bunds and tree planting fixed all this. Permaculture’s emphasis on perennial species was central. Woodlots on the ridges retained water and stabilized runoff. Orchards stabilized soils, built humus and infiltrated water – changing the diet with increased vitamins, carbohydrates and fibre. Excess fruit were fed to small livestock, which in turn provided protein.
The promotion of organic poly-culture agriculture as ‘permaculture’ has been successful to an extent that is remarkable. The word ‘permaculture’ is used to mean both the science and the CELUCT organisation. For example July Mtisi:
A lot of water was coming from up there, and it was eroding the topsoil. So we had a poor harvest. And there is this friend of ours, Permaculture. And we got advice from The Permaculture. They have given us the vetiver grass. And we planted this so that whenever topsoil is going away it is going to be stopped by the vetiver grass. And when it comes to this, to this swale here. When water goes inside there, it stays there and it goes down bit by bit.
Strategies that depend on the timely purchase of inputs fail time and again in this part of Africa. With permaculture strategies, inputs do not have to be bought to get a good crop. If inputs are to be purchased, they are things like poly pipe and fencing wire – bought when cash is available and lasting for decades. What is required is a long-term adult education in permaculture. Permaculture is based on a suite of overlapping and complementary technologies. Farmers can choose from a smorgasbord, learning what they want to implement next. As time passes, the synergies become apparent.
Participatory initiation
The Chikukwa project is based in participatory initiation. The people concerned specify the problem and undertake the work. The project assists.
The origin story of the Chikukwa project always gets told by talking about the way the drying up of the springs was the catalyst for the project. The motto of the ‘Strong Bees’ was ‘like bees we shall work’. The project ran for up to five years without funding. Current practice reflects these early lessons. Villagers are recruited into clubs working within the ‘departments’ of the CELUCT framework. These clubs mediate between CELUCT and the villagers. Villagers approach the relevant club with a problem. The club may then decide to take this to CELUCT and request a project or training. If CELUCT supports the request, they will organize assistance but the villagers themselves will do the work required – there is no payment. Any donations are of cheap long lasting materials with low technical complexity – such as poly pipe or cement.
Martha Shumba describes how this system of decision-making and project design operates:
As a family project, if we have a fish pond or those small livestock, that’s where also the children, they learn ‘cause they are the ones who even cut the vegetables and feed the small livestock, but we can stretch also to have a group fish pond. Where firstly, we write a project proposal. We gather, say five families, who have a common aim and maybe they would like a fish pond, and they write their proposal, give it to the subcommittee, of that village, and from that subcommittee [of the permaculture club], they will give it to the permaculture representative of that village. And that representative will take the proposal, to CELUCT management team, and they discuss together. If there is assistance, that will be needed there, they will be assisted. For example with skills, how they can do it, or material if it’s available, and then that’s how we do it.
Chester Chituwu, the current director, explains the way that bottom up initiation ensures commitment:
As CELUCT, we are only facilitating. They must own the whole process. And therefore it’s them that own and have to be responsible and they must have that culture of ownership, so that even with or without CELUCT as an organization, they are able to stand on their own two feet.
Most projects started on people’s own land come out of farm visits. People visit the farms of other villagers, and are inspired. CELUCT pays a fee to farmers hosting these visits. As Chester Chituwu explains:
Our training sites as CELUCT are not here [at the CELUCT centre], they are in the community. So when we have people who come for training, for practicals we take them into the community. And that alone is a motivator. Because if we take people to her home. The next door say, yeah, if I do so, it means people will also come and learn from mine.
The training delivered by CELUCT catches on as trainees try things out on their own farms:
We meet at our permaculture classes, and what we will have learned there, somebody will say, ok, now I have learned this, I have to implement it. And when they see that it’s working, next time when they are also learning something, they will keep on implementing because they know that it’s working. (Jessica Chibharo)
So, permaculture can be seen as a package of technologies. People learn about a particular technology (for example a ditch in the orchard) and install that. As that works, they try another technology (for example a new fruit tree).
These forms of participatory initiation should be replicated in all rural projects in this region. One of the greatest myths is that people will not work unless they are paid. Yet projects that pay the unemployed to work on their own land do not make lasting change. People join in to earn money and do not maintain things later on. This project has been different. Eli Westermann’s response to the drying up of the spring was not to find donor money to pay locals to dig contour bunds. Instead she started a small club of neighbours who were keen to work on their own land. Their next step was to call in advice and develop a plan. Then, they went up into the hills and started work. Clearly a party of six was insufficient to put in contour bunds across six villages. They inspired others to join them. The photos show that working parties were between about fifteen and twenty five people. In each, the Strong Bees joined those living close at hand. This is exactly what projects need to be successful. Begin small and work with those who will volunteer.
So CELUCT mostly works with individual households. People call for assistance to improve their own food production on their own household land. There is no attempt to create ‘cooperatives’ which will produce together, market together and receive income as a group (Marais and Botes 2007; Mkize 2008; Englund 2008).
This is not to say that there are no joint projects. These are of three kinds. One is where different households have to solve a common problem. For example, the construction of contour bunds to stop soil erosion. Villagers come together to form a working party. When CELUCT organizes something like this, snacks and drinks will be provided. A second kind of group is called together when one household asks other households to help with some large task. It is expected that those who are helped will repay the favour on another occasion. The third kind of group work is for joint community gardens. The garden is assisted with a donation of materials (cement, poly-pipe) from CELUCT and the villagers who are going to use the garden do the work. In a garden like this, each villager has their own plot. They may give some produce to families in need. All of this fits with the cultural norms of this region (Englund 2008). Households initiate most projects to assist their own production. When villagers work as a group, their individual contribution is recognized.
Bureaucratic democracy
Over the years, CELUCT has set up clear-cut and defined authority structures. These enable democratic participatory control. This is ‘bureaucratic’ in providing transparent and formalized structures. It is ‘democratic’ in setting up participatory control. Meetings are conducted formally and minutes taken. All accounting is open to inspection by community committees. The use of donor funds is discussed by panels of stakeholders. The democratic aspect of CELUCT is a necessity – to discover pressing needs and enable successful interventions.
The Permaculture Club Committee of CELUCT is a good example. Eugen Matsekete describes the process of selection:
I am representing the Permaculture Club Committee and that committee is eight representatives. We have six, and we have one person from each village and there will be a traditional leader who will sit on that committee, and the professional advisor, from the Ministry of Land. We represent the village and what we do, we work with the community members within our village, and if we have a proposal there, we’ll carry that proposal to the management team, and then we have meetings with the management team. Most every month. And if there are things that the community members would like, to be assisted, they can be assisted. The committee is being selected by the villagers. In its own village. And it is chosen, once in two years during a meeting we call “Open Day”, like an AGM. There’s a commitment fee, one rand per member.
So the Permaculture Club Committee is the peak body. The eight representatives are the traditional leader, the representative from the agricultural department and one representative from each of the six villages. These six are chosen in their villages on open day – every two years. Each villager who wants to vote pays a commitment fee (about 20 cents). The village committee is also selected then. During the year, this village club has regular meetings and provides training sessions. If community members want assistance, they bring the matter to the local permaculture club. Their representative approaches the central committee, which reports directly to CELUCT management. Through this, villagers participate in the control of CELUCT funds – they help to decide what projects CELUCT will assist.
This organizational framework is replicated for all CELUCT departments – the catering staff; the women’s social groups; the HIV/AIDS talking circles; the conflict resolution groups and so on. CELUCT works like a minor government, operating a representative democratic structure with functional ‘departments’.
As a model for project design, bureaucratic democracy works. Democracy for an NGO is always limited by donors. Assistance comes with strings attached. Within these limits, you have to get long-term commitment to get a successful project. The beneficiaries must participate with enthusiasm. Bureaucratic democracy reconciles these demands. The central organization vets all proposals to fit funding guidelines. At the same time, a shadow democratic government is established at a very local level. Transparent decision-making allows an accounting to be prepared for the donors. It also reduces concerns about corruption.
Counter cultural technologies of the self
CELUCT is not just focussed on food security. Food security depends on social harmony. Pursuing this, CELUCT promotes ‘technologies of the self’ like those developed by the counter culture of the metropolis (Foucault 1988). These are ‘social technologies’, through which people work on their ‘subjectivity’, their sense of themselves and identity. Even permaculture was established first in Australia to work with ‘new age’ settlers moving to the country for a more harmonious relationship with nature and a more satisfying experience of work. Other social technologies associated with CELUCT are also technologies of the self, pioneered in the counter culture.
The techniques of conflict transformation now used in the villages have been adapted from the new age therapeutic movement – resolving conflict by understanding all perspectives in a dispute. The women-only social groups that the project developed mirror the women’s liberation movement of the early seventies. Likewise, self help groups for people living with HIV/AIDS were pioneered by the gay community in countries like Australia and the US. The CELUCT pre-school has been established to reverse educational disadvantage – a method suggested by left education theorists in the seventies. Democratic meeting process of the kind seen in the Chikukwa committees – minutes, rotation of speakers, motions – is an organisational form coming out of the union movement and promoted in the new left and counter culture.
James Mackerenje, the head of the HIV/AIDS talking circles, explained his department:
Here, I am here to talk about HIV and AIDS. Here there are many cases of people who are infected with HIV. And the people sit down and said what can we do? And they decided to motivate people to know their status. At the end we make a program, which we call ‘talking time’, ongwaiva taurana, where people can get together, to open their status. And we did it in the six villages. We got six people to each village, and we came here and decided to teach others. To come up with your status. And when we came back to our villages. We teach our people about what they must do, to know what is in your heart, or your body, or your own status. And at the end, we see that the sick people, we are so little. And we said, what can we do? And we made a supportive group. This help people affected with HIV. To share him with the chores or to go and help him, with water, or to take firewood to him. Or to wash his clothes, yes.
Patience Sithole, the administrator, added to this, indicating the values of generosity, kindness and transparency which CELUCT promotes:
- Maybe to add from what you are saying. People were very motivated, because long back they thought HIV and AIDS was from other areas, not here. And if one is affected, people would say. I think that person is bewitched. And maybe they will hurt each other, they will hurt the neighbour. Whereby the neighbour should help that sick person, help look after your sick person. [Now] if they know, they discuss even with the children, that we are now positive, and it’s also a learning thing for the children.
Pointing out the parallels in the rich countries is not intended to prove there is nothing new under the sun. Much of this has been invented on the spot and harks back to traditional organization. A new agricultural strategy cannot work without good community relationships. Technologies of the self are the means to improve the social context.
The setting up of the Building Constructive Community Relationships department of CELUCT is an example. At the height of the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the management team could not be paid. Some were using the CELUCT car for personal trips. This was resented and discontented villagers stopped coming to CELUCT functions. To sort this out, meetings of CELUCT with the community established rules acceptable to all parties. Eli Westermann then travelled to Germany to train in conflict mediation. On her return, forty Chikukwa villagers were trained and later more. Ultimately up to 50 people in each of the villages had received the training. A permanent department of CELUCT was set up with clubs in each village. The mediations make use of role-play, dramatizations, brainstorming, along with working parties and setting agreements to solve problems. They deal with a multitude of conflicts – issues of land tenure, religious conflict, HIV/AIDS, agriculture and so on. From this, Eli prepared a textbook (The Three Circles of Knowledge) to document their approach – one that had been evolved for the specific conditions found in African villages.
Nothing that is being done here is unique. What is different is the integration of these different technologies of the self in a total package. There is an intensive, totalizing and overlapping intervention. Jessica Chibharo describes this:
We started doing our projects in Chikukwa. We had gardens, fishponds, orchards, wood lots; we had individual projects. And we also had home designs. We also kept small livestock. And we also encouraged those who didn’t like, to join others. To get in programs. We had exchange visits with other organizations and other communities. As we introduced our attachment program, it was for the community members to come and learn and after learning, they would go to their own village, and work with the people there. We had social groups, those social clubs, and young women would discuss together how best they could develop their homes. Because there was violence, something like that. So they discussed those issues, and openly. There were also times when age groups would meet and discuss their own issues. But there were also times when these different age groups would meet and try to discuss issues, openly, so that they would have a good relationship.
In many of the African villages there is a feeling of despair coming out of persistent unemployment. A global media promoting the high life reinforces this hopelessness. Problems like this require social technologies that go well beyond most rural development packages. What could be copied by other projects is the development of all these strands in the one place – rather than as scattered and separate programs, agriculture in one village, dispute mediation in another and HIV/AIDS groups in a third. There is a limit to what any of these programmes can do, taken on their own. Each of them is much more likely to work in combination.
Working with traditional leadership, traditional spirituality and Christian belief
Permaculture is a good fit with the indigenous world-view of the Chikukwa villages. In permaculture, space in the landscape is to be left for an uncultivated zone. This is for harvesting some forest products and for wild species. In its ethics, permaculture recommends care of the earth. All of this goes well with traditional spiritual practices. The springs on the land of the Chikukwa villages have been sacred sites and there is an obligation to look after the indigenous trees growing there. When the Strong Bees began their work restoring the springs, they asked the traditional leadership to seek the help of the ancestors. Peter Mukaronda described these events:
This was the spring for the community, called Chitekete, the village. And since it was their only source of water, they decided to reclaim the land, up there, trying to plant different types of indigenous trees. Because the indigenous trees, they are just made to bring back the water. And because of the chiefs in Chikukwa. Then they had to come here and sit down with the other community and they brewed beer, so the spirit, and so the water would come up. Later on, then the water came.
The traditional leadership has been involved in other ways. The previous chief gave the project his endorsement, helping the “Strong Bees” to recruit volunteers. Headmen serve on committees and are called in to consult when villagers request CELUCT assistance. The young relatives of the chief have begun a club to restore music and dances traditional to the clan. Zeddy Chikukwa from this group explained the link between traditional ideas and CELUCT:
CELUCT, we see it as a supportive organization in everything that we do. Because in our tradition, we do not allow people to cut down trees like water berries, like fig trees. They are sacred trees, which we also believe even our ancestral spirits, they go and reside there. And also we are in line with CELUCT in the use of organic agriculture. Where you are not supposed to use some artificial fertilisers because it damages the soil. So we know, it is there to sort of strengthen the rules and regulations of our community.
It seems quite possible that this appeal to traditional spirituality could be linked to other rural projects. Aspects of African traditional belief are still relevant in much of Africa. Permaculture strategies reforest parts of the landscape that have been sacred and encourage native wildlife, creating a sense of natural abundance, very much in evidence in the Chikukwa villages of today.
Permaculture has also been connected to Christian belief through this project. CELUCT begins meetings and workshops by invoking the ancestors with clapping, along with prayers and hymns, the common currency of the Christian sects. One of the members of the Strong Bees club was Julious Piti, then a youth. He is now living in the Chimanimani district outside of the Chikukwa ward and works to promote interventions in the dry western areas of Chimanimani district, as well as working on permaculture initiatives in other countries. He describes the way he and his wife chose the land on which they are now located:
We used to go to church with a lot of people, so we used to go into the mountains and pray, and one day, in around 1995, I went to that mountain and stayed there for three days. Praying. And when I was coming down, I was passing through this place. Then I felt. Ahah. I love this place. And then my wife, she started staying here, for some years and then I saw. Ahah, she loves this place. We saw with the plants around, and everything around, we felt in love.
Later in the interview he explains the meaning permaculture has for him:
Permaculture is a system of living which takes in cognisance to natural resources and everything that surrounds us living in harmony with no unbeneficial conflicts. And socially, you’ll make peace at the end of the day. Like a peace project, you will find all the links, when you apply permaculture principles. You see the principles, they link the whole community, plant community, people, whatever, insects, they are linked and everything will live in harmony. And produce enough for each other. That way, you also promote the water cycle, and even the oxygen that we breathe, and even the ozone layer can be reduced. It actually solves all the problems that we face in the human life. So it’s considered to be the right approach for us to live on earth. If you want to save the earth.
This is both secular and spiritual. It locates permaculture within a broader system of understanding, summed up in the phrase ‘the right approach for us to live on earth’ with its allusion to the Lord’s Prayer.
The presentation of sustainable farming as Christian practice is a theological response to the environmental crisis (Jenkins 2008). The earth is to be revered as God’s creation. God commands us to look after the earth. It seems unlikely that a purely secular approach to farming could be successful in these communities.
The gift in CELUCT
There is much about the organization of CELUCT that depends on gifts rather than monetary exchange. People donate labour on their own land. They donate work towards community projects. They may help other community members in a tit for tat arrangement. Patience Sithole describes these arrangements:
It can be done also in two parts, that the family can do it [a contour bund]. But also the village, or people who are round, surrounding that area. They can say, ok today we are working on Martha’s field, they can work there, and tomorrow they can work on Chester’s field.
CELUCT encourages households to provide gifts of food to the vulnerable. Community nutrition gardens have also been established to help them further. All these voluntary labours work directly on people’s own needs, but also consolidate CELUCT as an organization that helps the community.
Donations also come from the project. CELUCT distributes gifts from international donors, providing training and materials in the community. It also dispenses social rewards. The workshops are serviced with morning tea, there are amusing dramatizations, people get to participate with their neighbours, there is joking and camaraderie. The director shares stories with the older men while the younger CELUCT team urge people on, provide explanations and do the physical work alongside the villagers. Jessica Chibharo explains the way international donors and villagers contributed together to the buildings of the centre:
We managed to get us some funders who gave us some funding, and with that funding we bought material, that we build a community hall, which is up there. Community members had to mould bricks and carrying river sand and pit sand so that that block can be there for the whole community.
The management team (about 6 people in all) are paid by the international donor funding, which they also recruit. The funding is not always adequate and months of voluntary work have been required at difficult times. Accommodation and training are provided for people coming from the villages to the centre, as well as occasional gifts of materials such as seedlings or poly pipe. CELUCT also depends on international donations for their office equipment, and for their vehicle, used to convey the management team to workshops in the villages and to take trainees to field visits. Donor funds are also used to pay a small daily fee to those whose farms are used to demonstrate technologies. The catering staff, rostered from the villages, are also paid $5 a day each.
In 2010, two international NGOs were funding CELUCT. The total amount was approximately $60,000 per year. This was guaranteed for only three years. The EED, their largest donor, had decided to restrict funding to activities that were a part of the conflict resolution process. Sustainable Agriculture programs were only supported through a small budget funded by the TUDOR Trust.
CELUCT can be considered a hybrid combining aspects of a market economy with aspects of a gift economy (Leahy 2011). Looking at market aspects first, farming land is owned by individual households. CELUCT is the legal owner of the funds donated by international organizations. CELUCT pays villagers to open their farms for demonstrations and pays for catering staff. It pays the members of the management team a wage – though there are periods when their work is voluntary. So it functions as an employer within a market economy. Both CELUCT itself and the community depend on some cash income to operate. CELUCT absolutely depends on skilled business management and careful handling of money. Although CELUCT puts priority on non-market agriculture, it also promotes some sale of farm products – jams, fruit juices, livestock, wood, coffee or bananas.
The non-market aspects of CELUCT are equally significant. CELUCT depends on donations from the first world. Within the villages food is produced for use (subsistence) rather than for sale. CELUCT promotes and assists this subsistence agriculture. CELUCT depends on voluntary work. Both the work that villagers do on their own land and the work that they do for their neighbours, the community or for CELUCT. On their own farms, villagers are their own bosses – they are not employed to work or constrained to produce for the market. They effectively own their means of production. CELUCT has set up processes to negotiate the use of these smallholdings. Where the needs of the community are affected, these can trump the property rights of households. CELUCT encourages people to produce a surplus and give some to more needy members of the community. A degree of community control of the resources of CELUCT is achieved through participatory management of CELUCT projects. The community can also exercise the veto of failure to participate – to demand changes if they deem this necessary. These are forms of public control over CELUCT.
One of the biggest mistakes in development work is to see the task as integrating traditional villagers into the market economy. Almost all projects in Africa are based on this premise and fail as a result. Gibson-Graham point out that the supposedly ‘capitalist’ global economy can be conceived as a patchwork of different economic forms (2006a and 2006b). NGOs working in poverty relief operate very differently from capitalist firms. As the Chikukwa project makes clear, they can work very well by reinforcing activities which build livelihood but which are neither market based nor capitalist.
Conclusions
The Chikuwka project is an indigenous ‘Southern’ solution to a problem typical of South Eastern Africa. This is the failure of food security in rural areas. Where there is little chance of a broader political solution to these global problems, elements of the middle class of the metropolis seek a solution to these problems in aid work. The approaches gaining most traction are undoubtedly ‘silver bullet’ solutions that aim to roll out a particular technology and scale it up to improve the lives of millions. However in reality these problems have a social context and are not readily solved by just one technology applied willy-nilly. At the same time, the demand for a formula of recommendations is inevitable given the constraints of philanthropic action. Using this project as an example, I have argued that it is in fact possible to produce such recommendations. The failure of so many projects is not because everything has been tried. What makes sense is a project design that takes into account the social, cultural and economic coherence of a particular region and comes up with recommendations for both material and social technology.
This chapter has been concerned to explore the reasons for the remarkable success of the Chikukwa project; a success in stark contrast to the long-term outcomes of most rural projects.
The new landscape of the Chikukwa villages is a landscape informed by permaculture design, implemented through a multitude of tiny decisions. The concept of a polyculture organized around the household unit, with subsistence agriculture providing a range of complementary crops and livestock makes sense for this whole region of Africa. The Chikukwa project has been successful as an ‘embedded’ project. It has depended on the expertise of local professionals committed to the villages and the project. It has been oriented to subsistence agriculture rather than attempting food security by selling produce. This lesson is well overdue in the region. Permaculture design has allowed a diversity of nutrition, a synergy of multiple crops and livestock and an agriculture that does not depend on timely infusions of cash. The project is participatory. People request assistance and work on their own land. There is no payment. Rather than attempting grand transformations, the project has been content to start small with the people willing to do something. The project has set up formally constituted means for making decisions and recording transactions, reducing concerns about corruption and allowing local control. Democratic participation ensures all measures are truly wanted and will be maintained. The project has created an intensive overlapping involvement, employing various technologies of the self. This saturation of social capital makes sense to deal with the despair and anger coming out of decades of poverty and stigma. The project has sensitively adapted itself to traditional spirituality and Christian belief. Permaculture is a good fit with both. CELUCT combines various market practices with aspects of the gift economy. It is ironic that NGOs and governments, neither of which are capitalist firms, have believed that the only kind of successful development can be an extension of the capitalist firm and market relations into every nook and cranny of rural poverty. This has turned out to be an expensive mistake.
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