Growing a better future through farming

Vegetable farmer Mabel Dikobe’s story is a fine example of how equipping small businesses with the resources they require can empower them to support entire communities. Siyanda Sishuba reports.

- Siyanda Sishuba

FAST FACTS

As a participant in United Way South Africa’s Urban Agriculture Programme, Mabel Dikobe has been able to access farmland, where she grows dryland crops, and farming tunnels, where she produces vegetables.

Dikobe supplies fresh produce to informal traders, supermarkets, and four nursery schools in Alexandra, Johannesburg.

Dikobe’s NGO, Mveledzo, runs a project that teaches 200 orphaned and vulnerable children in Alexandra how to grow their own food.

Mabel Dikobe produces vegetables and sugar bean on her 1ha farm in Eikenhof, Johannesburg. She also runs a feeding scheme in Alexandra and manages a community upliftment NGO called Mveledzo.

Dikobe, 68, was still at school when she first discovered her passion for agriculture. From a young age she cultivated vegetables in her family’s garden at home. This eventually led her to join the Alexandra Renewal Project in 2005. This project identifies opportunities for agricultural development in the community. That same year, she established Mveledzo, before starting her feeding scheme in 2007.

When the Alexandra Renewal Project first started, it was mainly a waste-management community programme. Dikobe organised campaigns, with the assistance of the Department of Environmental Affairs and the then Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, to clean up parts of the township and turn them into vegetable gardens for the community. Members of the community also received training on how to maintain the gardens.

During one of the training workshops, an attendee spoke about receiving farmland from government, and Dikobe was curious to find out how this process worked.