Mandela Month
Undeterred by old age and spurred by her passion for vegetable farming, a Cape Town woman is greening open spaces in the city’s poor parts and feeding those less fortunate.
Aged 75, Christina Kaba is making a mark in townships across the Western Cape metro by introducing vegetable gardens that feed communities with homegrown produce.
Speaking to Vuk’uzenzele, Kaba said: “The gardens you see in Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Makhaza, Mfuleni, and in [former] coloured areas (in Cape Town) are managed by people whom I trained.”
Kaba’s passion for gardening spans over 40 years when she first worked for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Jonga Abalimi for 38 years.
After retiring in 2014 from Jonga Abalimi, she started her own NGO, Umoya weKhaya Peace Garden Cooperative with eight women and two men who are between the ages of 60 and 75.
Her first foray was a vegetable gardening project in Makhaza in 2014. Today she runs a 1.5 hectre project in Khayelitsha.
To date, the NGO has seen 11 plot owners benefit, with their income extending to about 124 family members.
Umoya weKhaya Peace Garden Cooperative’s main aim is to teach locals how to grow their food, produce food for selling and uplift the community through a soup kitchen from surplus vegetables produced by Kaba and her team.
The NGO produces hydroponic and open-air produced vegetables and herbs such as green peppers, green beans, various lettuces, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, spring onions, basil, mint, rosemary and oyster mushrooms.
The harvest is sold, shared among the members and donated to various charities.
On excess land on the plot, Kaba has established a childcare park as a safe and secure environment for children.
Accolades of community upliftment
Kaba’s hard work has paid off over the years, with the dedicated community activist receiving a long list of awards for her gardening work. These include the Department of Agriculture National Female Micro-Farming Entrepreneur Award in 2015, the Paul Harris Fellowship from Rotary International via Constantia Rotary Club in 2014 and the Nestlé Community Nutrition Award in 2002.
Kaba’s efforts of doing good for her community didn’t only end with the awards, but she took her projects one step further.
Determined, she identified land in the area that was previously earmarked for the construction of a school.
She realised that she needed a bigger space to expand her project and build a children’s park.
In her quest to acquire the land, Kaba asked someone to write a letter for her addressed to the Western Cape government.
"I can’t write but I asked someone to do it for me and I signed."
After several meetings, she was granted permission to use the 1,5 hectares where she currently runs her projects.
Feeding 5 000 people
Last year Kaba realised that she was often left with a huge surplus of produce from her initiative.
She decided to open a soup kitchen to feed those from poor households. The daily soup kitchen indirectly feeds up to 5 000 people at 20 sites in the Western Cape daily through the Community Nutrition Development Centre (CNDC) partnership with Ilitha la Bantu. CNDCs are government-operated food distribution centres rolled out since 2016 to meet the immediate nutritional needs of the most vulnerable and food-insecure members of our society.
The NGO has also received R251 200 in funding from the National Development Agency (NDA) to grow oyster mushrooms.
The NDA is an agency of the Department of Social Development that aims to empower civil society organisation.
With July being Mandela Month, Kaba’s work goes a long way in inspiring the spirit of ubuntu, espoused by South Africa’s first democratically elected President, Nelson Mandela.
“I share everything that I have with people from poor backgrounds because I grew up on the farms and I was very poor. Nelson Mandela’s words of ubuntu and peace encouraged me to always help impoverished people,” Kaba concluded.
For more information about the NDA visit www.NDA.org.za
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