Stokvel concept offers hope to young farmers

Brought together through necessity by severe and ongoing drought, a group of farmers from Kuruman, Northern Cape, established an unusual stokvel in 2016 to assist each other with the sharing of resources. Thapelo Kgopodithate, the founder of the Makawana Farmers’ Stokvel initiative, spoke to Siyanda Sishuba about the group’s achievements.

- Thapelo Kgopodithate,

Thapelo Kgopodithate is the manager at Boomplaas Farm in Van Zylsrus village near Kuruman in the Northern Cape. The farm is owned by his father, Oratile, and the family-run sheep, cattle and goats. His father farmed on communal land for 31 years before receiving his current farm from the government in 2012.

Kgopodithate completed a degree in human resources management at Damelin College in Pretoria in 2009. Unable to find employment close to home, he moved to Cape Town, where he ended up as a general worker at a large steel producer.

In the meantime, however, his father was struggling to manage the farm on his own, so he asked Kgopodithate to return home to assist him as a farm manager. Kgopodithate became fully involved in the business, and says that the more he learnt about

DROUGHT AS INSPIRATION

The Northern Cape is currently in the grip of a prolonged, highly destructive drought. Although farmers in this part of the country are no strangers to long droughts, coupled with temperatures that often rise to 40ËšC, the current drought is one of the worst on record.

In 2016 already, the Kgopodithates were facing ruin due to the financial strain brought on by the drought, and many other farmers in the province faced the same fate. It was his family’s struggle to keep their farm going that led Kgopodithate to start an unusual stokvel.

Named the Makawana (Tswana for ‘young people’) Farmers’ Stokvel, the initiative brought together farmers struggling with similar challenges. Its members are all younger than 35, and at the time of writing, there were 23 members, all from villages in the John Taolo Gaetsewe District in Kuruman.