When will the road get better? (1)

“This road used to be good. When we see it’s getting worse, why don’t we do anything about it?” It’s a rethorical question and coming from Christian. Christian is from the DRC and working for World Vision in his own country. We’ve hardly met and already are trying to tackle the major questions. Issues that are not just theoretical but are affecting him and his people in very deep and real ways.

While our car is almost flying over the road, with or without potholes depending on whether the Chinese have been there or not, Christian searches for answers. He goes back in history to Mobutu Seko Seko’s dictatorship and money disappearing to foreign bank accounts and in the pockets of officials instead of being invested in infrastructure. After that, war followed war and it quenched the last bit of hope from people’s souls. If you know that what you build today is very likely to be destroyed tomorrow, why bother building at all?

As we are passing through a furtile land, fields and hills, rain forest and small villages with lots of people, I wonder again why it is that this nation that is so rich in all imaginable ways, can’t pull itself together. For with its resources and minerals it could be one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

In the mean time we are passing churches – churches everywhere. While schools are thinly spread, almost every village seems to have a church. Mostly catholic. In this nation the message is in my face: Or the gospel is not true and is not good news at all. Or we as a church have done something very terribly wrong. And to be honest, I think it’s the latter.

Upside down economics in the Western Cape

CAPE TOWN - It wasn’t a question whether they would come and claim his land. It was more a question of when. So that’s why farmer Daen Kleynhans decided to take a step. Much to the discomfort of his colleague farmers in the area, he choose to leave the trenches and got himself involved in an agricultural empowerment project in the Elim community in the Western Cape. “I have the responsibility to do something. If I don’t, South Africa might become a second Zimbabwe.”

“We have to move towards equality in resources in this country, and that also includes land", says Kleynhans, born and then married into a farmers family. He acknowledges the responsibility of the agricultural sector but the change needs to take place "in a way that we can still feed South Africa and that doesn’t make from us another Zimbabwe. Because what we see happen a lot is that new farmers will get a farm, but no funding to buy seeds or without knowledge about how to actually run a farm. That is one of the big mistakes of the government and the land reform project. Nobody asks what expertise is available, what people have in order to run a farm successfully or compete with the international market.”

Kleynhans is clear about where he thinks the land reform process is off track. But he was also one of the first to respond positively to a request for help in setting up a diary project. At the beginning of last year the Elim community, about 30 kilometers from Napier in the Western Cape, approached him as chairman of the Milk Production Organisation (MPO) and asked him if he could help them to start a dairy production. Kleynhans: “The government helped to build a milk stall about two years ago. It’s there, with all the machinery. But no-one knew how to run it.”
Six months later, in September 2007, Kleynhans and a small team of local workers started with milking the 45 to 52 cows of the community. “The idea behind all of this is to teach people how to milk, how to run a business and next thing, to help them to run their own business.”
Elim has about 8000 hectares of land and enough water and there are plenty of opportunities for farming. The aim is that the community itself will produce what it needs to keep the dairy production going. This will result in a chain of businesses, the creation of jobs and income for the people in the community.

Daen Kleynhans thinks it as his responsibility to see a generation of farmers emerge who know what they are doing. But he seems to be on his own in this, at least in the area where he lives: “Not all farmers think the same as I do. I actually just came from a meeting where we discussed this. What I see with colleague’s is fear. They are afraid of loosing their land, their income. And so they try to protect and hold on to what they have. But will it help? Someone at some point will be loosing land. No matter what. It might be me. There are no guarantees. But I’ve decided to be pro-active cause I understand the past. There is a large group of people who never had the opportunities to develop themselves, to learn and to grow. And that needs to change.”

He would like his colleague-farmers to come and look at what is happening in Elim; how positive it’s impact is on all those involved, including himself. But he’s realistic enough to see that this will take some time. Cause it’s not just fear that holds the South African farmer back from getting involved in such an initiative. Kleynhans points out that farming in South Africa is hard work. The profit margins are small. And there is little time to do something else besides farming. He admits that getting involved in something like the Elim-project does require a substantial amount of time: “I am fortunate with having great staff working at my farm. And I always tell them: Be good to the farm and the farm will be good to you.”

The farmer himself seems to be living this statement: Cause despite the fact that he spends most of his time at the Elim-empowerment project, at the moment he has enough to invest in a second farm. Something he cannot explain. Upside down economics? “I would call it God’s provision. It’s not about my time or investment. It’s all about an issue, a problem that needs to be addressed. There is injustice and I want to do something about that. And I feel God’s saying to me: I will take care of you if you take care of my people.”