Elandskloof

Prof Siona O’Connell and Ms Dominque Wnuczek-Lobaczewski work in the Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria. Their research focuses on food heritage and vulnerability in South Africa.

Dr Jackson and Dr Crowley work within the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

In South Africa, the scars of inequality and social engineering that characterised the apartheid system persist despite nearly three decades of democracy. The country is one of the most unequal in the world and this pandemic has exposed the glaring injustices of the country’s past. These, combined with the current systemic deficiencies, limit largely forgotten communities’ access to water and housing, climactic changes that produce periods of severe drought, and increase the number of people who find themselves destitute and vulnerable to illnesses such as TB and COVID-19. The study of vulnerable and forgotten communities – single sites in particular – is therefore utterly crucial. Forgotten communities require context-specific approaches to support them taking into account histories, livelihood portfolios and likely climate change impacts.

Established as a mission station by the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in 1861, families from the surrounding area were attracted to settle by the dream of autonomy and dignity – title to a small plot of land, the right to graze your cattle in the surrounding veld, and a community of faith gathered under the wing of the church. Because of its remote and contained nature, residents called the valley die magie, the little stomach. Elandsklowers harvested buchu (Agathosma betulina), kept vegetable gardens, grazed cattle, and worked as seasonal laborers on the surrounding farms. The betrayal, when it came, was dramatic, unexpected, and intimate. In 1961 the DRC sold the land out from underneath them. Residents who were children at the time tell of going to school in the. morning, and returning to find the bulldozers at work on their homes. For some time, the bewildered congregation slept in the veld. Then, like the estimated 3.5 million people in South Africa who suffered forced removal under apartheid, they drifted into the surrounding towns and the dystopian dormitory settlements of the Cape Flats.

In 1996, Elandskloof hit news headlines as the first successful land claim in a newly democratic South Africa. Seventy-six families returned to die magie in a ceremony presided over by a jubilant Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Derek Hanekom. However, over the coming decades, the contradictions in a deeply flawed restitution process came to the fore: land without the capital to develop it, and a group of claimants many decades removed from a meaningful relationship with the business of rural livelihoods, carrying the scars of the struggle for survival under apartheid. In 2005, the Elandskloof Communal Property Association was placed under administration. Today, Elandskloof is an impoverished rural ghetto without infrastructure, and with little formal housing. Most Elandsklowers exist on government grants, with elderly women resorting to collecting acorns for pig feed. Layered onto these traumatic events as an unanticipated and largely indecipherable process has been the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Southern Africa, and the Western Cape, in particular, has been described as a climate change hot-spot, with evidence of warming above the global average.

We are what we eat goes the platitude. Food makes our material bodies, influences our moods, and becomes a source of intense pleasure and revulsion. It also becomes part of an everyday language of love. Preparing and sharing food is a ritual through which we build and repair relationships, and nurture those that we care for. Food heritage is interesting because it takes us to such an intimately embodied and everyday aspect of some dauntingly high-level concerns – ideas around culture, identity, history, descendency, and genealogy. The tangled food heritages of the Cape reference indigenous foodways, the slave diaspora established by the Dutch, missionary proselytization, British colonialism, apartheid segregation and forced removals, and the ambiguities of post-apartheid reconciliation and restitution.

Places such as Elandskloof require context-specific approaches to support them taking into account histories, livelihood portfolios, and likely climate change impacts. Indeed, in South Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the country’s systemic failures to provide adequate health care, housing, and access to water while exacerbating the persistent income inequality that is a legacy of its colonial and divided past. The complexity of these effects make people living in such communities vulnerable to future crisis and must be considered holistically for approaches to lead to long-term benefits for communities.

The recurring theme that has emanated from this research is the lack of trust not only within the community itself but also towards individuals who do not form part of the originally dispossessed Elandskloof residents. There is also a longstanding distrust towards neighbouring farmers and governing bodies that are responsible for making key decisions (around the land, conservation, and disaster management).  This should not prevent any possible support (through the means of climate and environmental data) that could be provided to this community. 

Interviews from across the community suggest the absence of guidance and information on climatic change in South Africa's Western Cape from an accredited source. Locals are reliant on radio stations and newspapers for information on climate change, such as the crippling drought that ravaged the Western Cape during the last decade, but knowledge of the future is hard to come by.

There has been little, if any, attention paid to capturing the rich personal and collective histories of this community; recipes, ways of life about religion, employment, marriages, and movements among others that point to a community held hostage to their past, and without the necessary tools to survive and flourish. There is a thread of abandonment, of being forgotten, and the inability to find a platform from which to imagine and chart a different path.

Although Elandskloof is struggling, there is evidence that local and shared knowledge played an important role in adapting to the changing climate but at a very minimal level. Residents recognised that the drought has become an ideal climate in which Buchu and other crops could flourish however, this process is once again hindered by deep divisions within the community. The community has also recognised that they require further knowledge around soil quality and climatic changes to fully benefit from the available land that is still accessible to them.

Elandskloof reinforces the importance of context-specific approaches in the decision-making processes around land policy and conservation. This necessity reveals itself when considering how the residents of Elandskloof values its natural resources, more specifically how the regulation around the harvesting of Buchu has impacted the community. During the second visit to Elandskloof, it became clear that there is still contention around the ownership of Buchu on bordering farms. This contention has further fuelled a reluctance to engage with any of the neighbouring farms. This disintegration with surrounding communities could further isolate Elandskloof from shared dialogues around climate change adaption strategies as well as important conversations with governing bodies such as Cape Nature. The residents have voiced their concerns over the lack of support they have received thus far from these governing bodies to prepare for possible natural disasters. 

Questions around heritage surfaces within this community in various ways. The preservation of their tangible heritage has become a point of concern for some residents. At the heart of the community lies the remnants of two-valued buildings, the church, and the community hall or school building, which was part of the original construction when the Elandskloof as a missionary town was established. These buildings are recognised by the community as valuable sites in which learning and worship still take place. These buildings also serve as an important space where residents can find common ground through shared practices such as worship, the hosting of bazaars, and,  more importantly, a place for commemorating the past (events are often held by local community leaders in which they try and prompt dialogue on Elandskloof’s history).  

Anderson, M. (1993) Elandskloof: land, labour and dutch reformed mission activity in the southern cedarberg, 1860-1963. dissertation.

Barry, M. and Mayson, D. (2000) “Informal Settlement Characteristics in a Rural Land Restitution Case: Elandskloof, South Africa,” Sociological Research Online, 5(2), pp. 95–103. doi: 10.5153/sro.494.

Wiese, T. and Goedeman, R. (2009) Die verhaal van elandskloof. 1Ste uitgawe edn. Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis.

O’Connell, S. (2018) Uitgesmyt. South Africa, 25 minutes.

CRITICAL Project, UKRI:  https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FV006371%2F1#/tabOverview 

Karunarathna, D., Crowley, K., and Jackson, R., 2022. Climate Story Telling in Sri Lanka Available at  https://arcg.is/1viuT4 

Retnowati, A., Anantasari, E and Crowley. K., 2022. Kali Code: Heritage landscapes in Indonesia Available at  https://arcg.is/1Hr0Dj