Government programmes meant to turn small black-owned operations like hers into sustained, mid-sized agricultural businesses are well-intentioned but too slow, she suggests.
JOHANNESBURG - Surrounded by a crop of wilting sugar beans, Georginah Sidumo rubs red dust off a folder of documents she says are the only proof her farmers’ cooperative has the right to work on the land it controls.
Land is a hot-button topic in South Africa, where racial inequality remains entrenched more than two decades after the end of apartheid when millions among the black majority were dispossessed of their land by a white minority. “I will vote for whoever can help us,” says Sidumo, co-chairwoman of BlueDisa, a cooperative of 21 freehold and subsistence farmers given parcels of a hectare each by the government as part of the reforms.
The dog-eared photocopies she carries in a backpack alongside a bottle of water and pruning tools are a form of insurance, Sidumo says. They trace the co-op’s legal and financial journey since the Department of Public Works first granted them access to the land.Sidumo lacks a computer, so her teenage daughter prints out the official documents and correspondence with officials for her to keep in case they find an investor or need proof of their right to the land to show other community members.
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