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Disco soups
from Curiosity Issue 6
by Curiosity
by Deborah Minors
A new form of food activism is making gardening ‘cool’ in the township of Khayelitsha. A research project on food governance, based in the Wits School of Governance, is investigating this new activism.
The Earth Connections food research project is a sciencecitizen initiative that explores the intersection of matriarchs, gardeners and their relations with land in a South African urban township context. The research team comprises three academics from Wits and the Nelson Mandela University, and two food gardeners from Ikhaya Gardens in Site C in Khayelitsha, Western Cape.
Lauren Mulligan
THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF FOOD GARDENERS
The research site, a food garden at a primary school in Khayelitsha, is a ‘space of hope’ where children participate and learn from food gardeners. Food governance and the food garden are a response to Big Food retailers who dominate food consumption and distribution.
Philosophically, a food garden represents a site of selfgovernance for the body. A food garden is a place where we control our own food and, by extension, our own bodies. Reconnecting with the earth through a food garden reduces feelings of alienation that are symptomatic of modern life.
“Neo-liberal governance produces extreme forms of alienation in the work and social environment. Connecting with the food garden produces a site of revitalisation and relative autonomy within our social relations,” says Dr Darlene Miller, Principal Investigator of the Food Research Team.
CONNECTING WITH ‘COOL’
The Khayelitsha food gardeners host ‘disco soups’ where they mix music, recite poetry and make soup with recycled vegetables. At the spinach ‘bar’ near a Khayelitsha train station, you can buy a spinach bread loaf for R10.
Earth Connections has produced a documentary of the political philosophies of these food gardeners.
“We are more focused on education. We are more focused on bringing back the dignity of the people – the independence. We are more focused on self-reliance where we say that you can feed yourself from the small soil that you have. So we’re more about expanding the knowledge of growing,” says Xolisa Bangani, a food gardener.
