EDITORIAL | When growing vegetables to help others is unlawful, something is wrong

Many in society have no problems obeying laws because, for the most part, these are enacted to help engender order, peace and human progress. Many laws are intrinsically good and those who break them are aberrations.

Once in a while though, we encounter, here and elsewhere, a law so absurd it upsets our sensibilities. The latest of these is a municipal bylaw in Tshwane that encourages people to plant grass and flowers, and not useful vegetables such as cabbage, onions, pumpkins or potatoes that resident Joe Nkuna planted. 

In a country where no one is dying of hunger, perhaps the municipal law would make sense. 

The decision by the Tshwane Metro to throw the book at Nkuna, referred to elsewhere as the ‘cabbage bandit’, should be condemned for the hypocrisy it represents.

Let’s remind ourselves. Just last week, the government entity responsible for statistics, Stats SA, told us the poverty line has been adjusted upward to R624 a month. This means one needs more money to escape poverty than was the case previously. Last month, the same body told us there were now more people who were unemployed and had given up on ever finding work. These stood at historic levels of more than 12-million. In short, South Africans are having it tough. It is survival of the fittest — and even the fittest are few.

To say our economy, generally, had been in the doldrums ahead of Covid-19, which has now pushed even more companies off the cliff and people out of work, is to state the obvious. 

The impact of this onslaught on individuals and families is an increase in hunger and helplessness, some of which leads to rampant criminality or suicide. 

Aware of the desperation and the need, Nkuna thought it would be novel to use the verge outside his house to plant a few vegetables for his selfless wife to donate to South Africans pummelled by a poorly run economy. “I planted vegetables because they were cheaper and I wanted to assist her (so she could assist others).” In March, I donated 35 massive pumpkins and 145kg of sweet potato from here. It became so successful that I moved the vegetable garden to opposite the street to the recreational park, where I planted mielies, pumpkins and other crops,” he said.

The law-abiding Nkuna has turned down law firms that wanted to challenge the constitutionality of the Tshwane bylaw, saying he has no appetite “to fight to the death over a head of cabbage”.

Tshwane MMC for community safety, Karen Meyer, confirmed a complaint about Nkuna’s vegetable garden was received. “TMPD have to attend to all complaints and have to deal with it according to the city’s bylaws,” she said. Meyer then states that “permission must be asked from a landowner before you do anything on someone else’s property. Any proposals to change the current bylaw would be investigated,” she added.

Meyer is correct that permission ought to have been sought. What would have been even more correct was if she weighed whether Nkuna was using council property for illegal, dubious means or not. In an economy like ours, why is it OK to plant green grass and not cabbage? Should our extremely embarrassing levels of poverty not force politicians such as Meyer and President Cyril Ramaphosa to encourage people to plant even more cabbages for themselves, rather than wait for R350 grants? Clearly Nkuna can afford to feed his family, but those who his wife feeds can’t. 

When these vegetables don’t reach some hungry and homeless people, will Meyer and her DA colleagues who run Tshwane sleep peacefully? Will they thump their chests with satisfaction that they enforced an unjust bylaw that disadvantaged some of society’s weak and infirm from benefiting from the Nkunas generosity? This is absurd. You would think those behind the demolition of Nkuna’s garden are, generally, meticulous in how they uphold the country’s laws. Yet in Tshwane alone, there was about R2.9bn in irregular expenditure in 2018/19, according to the last audit report by Kimi Makwetu, released in July last year. 

The auditor-general reveals, however, that municipalities, generally, incurred about R32bn in irregular expenditure, while R36bn in contracts could not be audited “due to missing or incomplete information”.

The decision by the Tshwane Metro to throw the book at Nkuna, referred to elsewhere as the “cabbage bandit”, should be condemned for the hypocrisy it represents. The city has bullied a family that helps others. Even if it didn’t help anyone, they would still need to be encouraged to do something to grow their own vegetables to fight their own poverty. This is something we must all do. 

Instead of directing its energy towards saving us billions in wasteful expenditure, the politicians and technocrats of Tshwane are playing Incredible Hulk with helpful members of society. This is shameful and should not be countenanced. Unjust laws are not to be obeyed. In the same way that apartheid itself was a law that needed to be fought, this bylaw stands to be challenged and changed, if not discarded completely.