3. Mvuselelo Ngcoya, Bonakude Farm: Opportunities, challenges of deep localism in AE markets

Biowatch Public Seminar: Markets, politics and agroecology - 14 August 2024
Biowatch hosted a public seminar to explore how aspects of the colonisation of South Africa shaped the current food system and led to enduring agrarian inequalities still influencing rural livelihoods today.
The seminar bridged between the 2024 Biowatch Agroecology Farmer Fair on 13 August (where farmers shared seed and discussed progress on promoting indigenous small grains such as millets and sorghum), and deepening discussions in the KZN Agroecology Platform on 15 August, which centred around marketing and promoting agroecology. The seminar thus continued to spark and carry through themes and questions arising from the previous day into the next day’s discussions.
Innovative projects presented their inspiring initiatives to re-claim the food system by localising production, markets and palates through African food cultures and agroecological systems. There were three presentations:
Presentation 1: Siphiwe Sithole (African Marmalade)
Taking indigenous African food out of the periphery into the mainstream
Restoring the appreciation and production of African indigenous crops and foods, from the seed to the plate.
Presentation 2: Russel Hlongwane and Tammy Langtry
Icala Lemthombo: The case of sorghum
A performance-lecture presenting evidence against the Durban Corporation in the case of stolen umqombothi through the Native Beer Act of 1908. Included film testimony by one of the women in the 1959 Beer Hall riots.
Phumzile Nkosi Film credits:
Direction, research and script: Russel Hlongwane and Tammy Langtry
Voice over: Phumzile Nkosi
Editor and sound: Keanan Naidu
Archival footage courtesy of British Pathé
uMqombothi clips by Gabriel Masenya
This film is supported by SPIELART Theatre festival (2023), OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, and the Fisher Center Lab (2023).
Produced in 2023.
Presentation 3: Mvuselelo Ngcoya (Bonakude Farm)
Opportunities and challenges of deep localism in agroecological markets
The strategies the Bonakude network of farmers are employing to deepen local markets for agroecological produce.