South Africa 
South African urban desert transformed into greens

afrol News / WWF, 27 June 2002 - Abalimi Bezekhaya, a community-based organisation in South Africa, is transforming the sandy urban desert of Cape Flats into a productive green environment. The apartheid-landscape is slowly made into a quality township with a local resource basis and a positive environment. 

The South African Cape Flats are barren, dusty, and windswept. Home to over a million people, this string of black and coloured settlements and townships on the east side of Cape Town is a hard - and dangerous - place to live. 

The settlements and townships were forcefully established in the early 1980s under the apartheid government of the time. They include a high percentage of informal shacks with no electricity or running water, built on infertile sand dunes and unprotected from severe wind and rain. Unemployment ranges from 50 to 90 per cent, and the sheer difficulty of survival breeds crime and violence. With schools and school grounds resembling desert-like prisons, there is no reprieve from the hostile environment even for children, many of whom are not fed before coming to school. In this environment conservation has little meaning.

But a community-based organisation is changing this harsh picture, WWF-South Africa reports. Abalimi Bezekhaya - which means 'planters of the home' - is slowly transforming the sandy urban desert into a productive green environment. 

The organisation was founded in 1982 to promote and facilitate urban food gardens in Cape Flats, where residents had little access to fresh vegetables. Two non-profit community garden centres were established in the townships of Khayelitsha and Nyanga to supply a wide range of low-cost gardening resources, such as manure, seed, seedlings, tools, and pest control remedies. Each garden centre is run as a business, but mark-ups are very low (approximately 20 per cent) to ensure that the goods remain affordable for even the lowest income groups. The garden centres also provide a comprehensive education programme.

The garden centres quickly became well patronised. By 1991, over 7000 people had utilised the centres' resources and sales were growing at an average of 80 per cent per annum. Today, the two centres provide agricultural resources to up to 5000 subsistence farmers each year. In addition, Abalimi Bezekhaya-supported community gardens have started to organise regular market days to sell their sought-after organic vegetables.

Through community demand, Abalimi Bezekhaya's programme has expanded to include a broader environmental and greening approach. Since 1994, the organisation has helped community groups to establish different types of permanent model projects to improve both the standard of living and the environment of Cape Flats. Abalimi is currently engaged with over 200 community based urban agriculture and environmental renewal initiatives.

One model project is the greening of Cape Flats schools. With support from WWF-South Africa's Green Trust, Abalimi Bezekhaya has developed over 20 Green School Models, with over 20 more in the queue. In each participating school, a major portion of the school grounds has been converted from desert to green area using indigenous, water-wise plants. In addition, school vegetable gardens have been established and supported. 

In an extension of this project, the S.E.E.D. (Schools Environmental Education & Development) programme was created in 1998 to further assist teachers and school communities to green their school grounds and use them as an outdoor classroom. A practical guidebook for school greening was compiled and a teacher-training course was developed. This year the project has focused on setting up sustainable structures for the vegetable gardens, including rain harvesting systems, fencing, herb and leguminous tree borders, and windbreaks.

Another model project is the creation of community managed parks, such as Manyanani Peace Park in Khayelitsha. Created in 1994, this is the first community park to be successfully established in the informal settlements of Cape Town, and remains the leading model for community-based park development. The park covers 1.8 hectares and is planted with lawns, trees, and groundcovers, most of which are indigenous species. The Peace Park includes an open air amphitheatre, drinking fountains, benches, a half-size soccer field, an open-air basketball court, a small community centre, and play equipment such as swings and slides. 

- Abalimi Bezekhaya's model projects have proved extremely successful, according to WWF-South Africa. "They have not only directly improved the lives of Cape Flats communities, but have influenced broader policy formulation, including town council structures, usage of open spaces, and ecological urban agriculture development." In addition, the organisation's community garden centres are still the only agricultural resources in the informal settlements of Cape Flats. 

And the organisation continues to expand its activities, entering into new partnerships with community-based environmental and urban agriculture projects at schools, environmental youth clubs, and community gardens. "Through its sustainable development projects, Abalimi Bezekhaya certainly is a green light for the future," WWF concludes on its South African partner.

Abalimi Bezekhaya is part of Abalimi, an independent, non-denominational affiliate of Catholic Welfare and Development. Abalimi's overall objective is to capacitate, train, and resource urban environmental and ecological agriculture organizations and movements within grassroots informal settlement communities. Abalimi has been helping residents of the Cape Flats with urban agriculture and greening for almost two decades. 

Sources: Based on WWF South Africa 

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