The evolution of community development is important, and often after decades of observation the real trend of the development, destruction and lost opportunities emerge and begin to make sense.
In the traffic of the present, self-interest passes for what the future could look like, and a host of human tailings fall for such. In this regard measured science-based information and its influence in decision-making is at all material times required and has to be nurtured. It will minimise the risk of losses, especially preventable ones. Such decisions require documentation and communication of the knowledge being discovered and taught.
This approach is even more important as people explore challenges and opportunities in community-based development as part of indigenous knowledge systems and practice. These are etched in the geography and breed a specific culture of economics entrenched in the system of thinking, in its geography and its features while benefiting and contributing to the nature of global discourse.
Six decades later I come to realise my observations as a child in my community of birth and upbringing could culminate in scientific discourse or lack thereof. The effects of continuous treatment of the environment took root then and manifested their most horrendous consequences years later.
I grew up in a village called Patisi, in the district of Mafeteng, Lesotho. Patisi is part of the San orthography, with the clicks in “Qalabane” and “Qibing” part of the rich history of human cultural and social intercourse. Hermon was a French mission in Patisi. Because of the missionary education Hermon provided, the name Patisi tended to recede.
Behind my home were the graves of the San people, and these were probably only known to my father because he was the only one in the village who spoke about those uneven low-level protrusions covered by grass. He was also a man who observed geological formations and followed these with keen interest. In one of the places, there was a sand rock formation he took me through and indicated a massive snake print entombed on that formation.
The village of Patisi sits against a mountain to its west. The mountain is called Qibing. Qibing is next to the Qalabane mountain, where on the August 15 1865 the Basotho warriors defeated the Boers and Louw Wepener was killed by a stone unleashed by a Mosotho warrior who stopped Wepener with a mortal blow to the head as Wepener tried to mount the Qalabane mountain. Wepener was decapitated immediately. This I also learnt from my father.
Qalabane for many years became a painful name to the Boers. Mentioning Qalabane when you were in Wepener could attract so much trouble. The Qibing range of mountains has springs that feed into the Monts’oane River. The rivulet system then had reeds and other hydrophilic plant species and grasses that boast high capillary capacity. Though now only in faint memory of the early 60s one remembers this ecology, the system survived up to the mid-70s before it took a turn into terminal decline.
My father used to discuss this ecosystem with me, pointing to the dangers facing it, especially overgrazing of the high capillary grass system. In the 60s, traditional rule was very strong.
My father used to discuss this ecosystem with me, pointing to the dangers it faced, especially overgrazing of the high capillary grass system. In the 60s, traditional rule was very strong. It presided over the preservation of the environment, and each of us herd boys understood this responsibility. The reeds would be preserved until winter when they are ripe for harvest as material for thatching houses. Each household was allowed to harvest over a period of three to four days for its own use or sale.
In similar ways, the mountain grass would also be open for specific periods in the winter months for mowing, and so would trees for energy. The chief was entitled to 10% of the reed bushels harvested. The collective taxation was available not for the chief’s benefit but as a custodian of these taxes for those in need and distress as well as community projects. One such community project was the accommodation of the extension officer who presided over our village’s agricultural practices.
The economic system allowed people to grow their own vegetables on an equitable basis in these spaces and also had fields where in particular sorghum, maize and wheat would alternate through the summer and winter months.
A prominent community practice was the village community garden. Each household owned a strip of land where vegetables were grown throughout the year by household labour. It was always a festivity when villagers went to the community garden to tender to vegetables and return home with bounty.
My family did not have a plot at the community garden but had its own share at the school garden. We always felt like we lost out each afternoon as we walked our different ways to the school garden when the rest of the village proceeded to the community garden. The extension officer, a Mr Lephoole, was innovative in his approach to community work, especially the community garden. He would be there to demonstrate some of the best practices in vegetable management. After a tenure of 10 years, Lephoole was transferred. An elderly extension officer landed in Patisi to replace him. Despite being elderly he was driven by what everyone deemed to be a sense of modernity.
While Lephoole rode a horse, Ntate Moeketse rode a motorbike. No sooner had he arrived than he introduced radical changes to the system.
While Lephoole rode a horse, Ntate Moeketse rode a motorbike. No sooner had he arrived than he introduced radical changes to the system. His arrival coincided with the introduction of a school feeding scheme, which might have not been necessary because the village was quite self-sufficient. In retrospect the feeding scheme did a lot more harm to the economic ecosystem of the village than good.
Extension officer Moeketse introduced a pump-powered irrigation scheme so villagers did not have to carry the watering cans from the dam or allow water to flow through the furrow system, but the pump had a sprinkler system. The innovation around the feeding scheme was based on villagers supplying supplementary vegetables to the school in exchange for a pump system and associated petrol that ran it. It was very exciting to see the system in action. The afternoon sun would cut through the sprightly sparkle of the spring water generating a rainbow that we could see at close range for the very first time.
No sooner had this success played out than every villager wanted a plot in the community garden. There was land, and the extension officer convinced the chief to extend it. I recall the day when spans of cattle had to open the virgin land towards and into the reeds. The gods got angry, and four almost simultaneous responses occurred.
The first was the young and naughty Makae decided to use the inverted L-shaped pipe that supplied the sprinklers with water into a see-saw. It broke, with no money to fix it. Second, the reeds were provoked by the extension of community plots, and they rapidly covered the plot. The line of ecological rationality was crossed, and the reeds chased the vegetables. The villagers could not cope with weeding reeds. Third, the community had less surplus to provide the school feeding scheme and started defaulting.
In addition, the catchment area of the school population went beyond the catchment area of the community garden, and the community from the onset was not very delighted to feed children from beyond their village. The fourth was school fees were introduced. It was fifty cents a year. Many of the older children in the classes from grade 4 were often asked by their families to go work in the mines. This removed elderly boys from the labour market that provided ploughing and planting of fields in the summer and winter months.
By 1969 when PM Leabua Jonathan declared the state of emergency in Lesotho after losing the election to Ntsu Mokhehle, Patisi was in terminal decline. Its cultural and economic base was fast heading south.
With all that happening, agricultural fields remained fallow because the critical leadership role of the primary school’s elderly scholars in domestic economic chores had disappeared into the mines, away from school fees. The school garden and the community garden wavered, waned and finally closed down. Food availability also dwindled as livestock and management of grass and natural resources floundered.
The wonderful ecosystem of reeds, waterways, trees and shrubs and grass that anchored the village economy and held the village together disappeared and remained a barren wasteland. Now I understand what my father meant when he talked about the preservation of the waterways, the reeds and the high capillary grass. He said if those were not preserved, River Monts’oane, the life giver of the village, would run dry. It is now dry, save for the time torrents visited the village. The birds that used to fly into the reeds have disappeared with the reeds.
A central feature of the system of environmental and economic statistics can only be valuable and successful when it focuses on the community. It holds promise not only to awaken society to the ravages of capitalism but also to promote higher levels of consciousness that advance the essence of cultural economic geography.
As South Africa grapples with the just energy transition, a strong ally in this game of high stakes are community-level assets, and reclaiming these is not only a sufficient condition for a just transition but a necessary component that will raise a generation of children of higher-order consciousness that can fulfil Steve Biko’s mission of Black Consciousness and liberate us towards exploring and answering the difficult but inspiring concept of Biko’s Black Communalism. Perhaps it is the nexus of the social compact that has continued to elude us.
* Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a Distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.