From a DJ to a farmer

Lubabalo Ngcwembe, Eastern Cape finalist for the 2023 Agricultural Research Council's National Kaonafatso ya Dikgomo Award that aims to honour the county's best emerging beef farmers, is from the Qonce area. Mike Burgess recently visited him to better understand his unique experiences.

- Lubabalo Ngcwembe

“There have been many ups and downs, but you must stick to it and focus on your vision. For the past six years that I have lived this life, I haven’t regretted it at all,” says Lubabalo Ngcwembe (43), from Zwelitsha near Qonce in the Eastern Cape, about his fledgling farming career.

It started in 2017 when his brother, Khaya, who works for Toyota SA, purchased a 45ha farm near Qonce and offered Ngcwembe, then still a fulltime disc jockey (DJ), the opportunity to farm it. In 2018, a neighbouring 45ha farm was added, and the combined 90ha unit was christened Ikhasilethu (Our Castle), on which Ngcwembe has managed to establish a profitable livestock and vegetable production enterprise despite numerous challenges, including high levels of crime.

A NEW LIFE

Ngcwembe was raised in the sprawling township of Zwelitsha near Qonce, which in the 1980s was defined by acute political unrest. By the mid-1990s however, he matriculated in a new democratic South Africa and after a few unsuccessful attempts at tertiary education (in the information technology field), he completed a carpentry course at Lovedale College in Alice.

Despite this qualification, though, he could not find a job, and eventually turned to his passion of playing music for an income.

For years he plied his trade as a DJ in the Eastern Cape, but by 2016 realised he would need to boost his income to effectively support his children. His brother’s offer for him to farm Ikhasilethu therefore came as a welcome and timeous opportunity.

“I needed to put food on the table,” recalls Ngcwembe. “I really have never regretted becoming a farmer.”