Opting for a great green garden of national unity

Displaced from her home in Limpopo where she lived for more than two decades, Bridget Hilton-Barber moves to Jozi and takes up a political act: gardening

- Bridget Hilton-Barber

Time to sow seeds.

It is spring. Time to clear, trim, plant, sow, compost. Time to kickstart the garden into the flourish of summer. I started my garden of national unity last year, a few months after I moved back to Jozi, having lived in Limpopo for 20-something years.

I pretty much lost everything when our family farm there was sold. Dispossessed of my house I washed up in Jozi just in time to vote in South Africa's ninth democratic election in May.

I had to forsake my provincial vote, which underlined my sadness. Having voted in a suburban polling station staffed by delightful and polite rainbow-vibe volunteers, I went back to my strange new home and, tearfully and unsteadily, began to feel out a new life.