According to the Children’s Institute of the University of Cape Town, 2.7 million children were living in hunger or were malnourished in the country in 2007. More than a million of these children were in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. There are more than 9 million beneficiaries of the child support grant. The minister of finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan, announced in his 2010 budget speech that the amount would be increased by R10 from R240 to R250 this year. However, this grant is not used only for the child as most beneficiaries are unemployed and the money is used to take care of the entire family. This amount is not enough to buy clothes, pay school fees, pay rent and electricity (or an alternative fuel), and also to buy nutritious food for the entire family. A way in which families can supplement both their income and food is through farming, and some communities have done so successfully.

The first of the case studies is a community enterprise in the Northern Cape called Tshwaranang Hydroponics. The community of Windsorton, situated 65 km from Kimberley, started a project which supplies Shoprite and Checkers with an average of 6 000 cucumbers a week. The Northern Cape Department of Agriculture funded the construction of a greenhouse and a high-tech irrigation system, while the National Development Agency covered the costs of a cooler truck and operational costs such as labour and seeds. The community was also provided with technical training and mentorship. Thirteen community members are employed full-time on the project.

The project initially focused on just growing cucumbers to ensure that the beneficiaries were fully acquainted with the hydroponics system, and to give them an opportunity to market their product. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. After successfully running the project with cucumbers, the beneficiaries are now experimenting with different varieties of cucumbers and winter crops such as beans, egg-plant, and tomatoes.

The second case study is the Sipulazi Biofuel Cooperative in Mpumalanga which was started by 179 emerging farmers in 2008. The cooperative owns 1 200 hectares of land and has the potential to create 4 000 jobs.

To start with, the National Development Agency gave the farmers more than R1.9 million to buy seeds, fertiliser, and equipment, as well as to provide training in biofuel production.

Biofuel is made from oil cake, which is extracted from soya beans, and is currently imported from Brazil. Oil cake can also be used as animal feed. In its first few months in operation, more than 200 tons of soya beans were produced. The cooperative’s long term target is to produce more than 60 000 tons of soya beans a year.

The two case studies were sourced from a 2009 edition of a magazine of the National Development Agency entitled The Voice – unlocking potential.

Councillors can initiate such projects even on a much smaller scale, where people are given the tools to start small vegetable gardens in their yards. These give people a sense of pride, in that they can provide for themselves and their communities, and are actively making an effort to be independent.

 Municipalities have to look at other means of alleviating poverty, other than child support grants and free basic services to which only some have access. Projects such as the two case studies, if run efficiently and effectively by the communities, have the potential to truly empower communities to be self-sufficient.

-          Nthamaga Kgafela