A community of farmers in Mpumalanga has been in the spotlight this Women’s Month for all the right reasons. The Giba Communal Property Association (CPA) has already created jobs for 122 women and is intent on extending its reach.
The Giba CPA, in Kiepersol near Hazyview, is the result of a land claim in the late 1990s, in which 2 700 hectares of land have been awarded and 1 540 hectares transferred so far. The CPA consists of 417 registered beneficiary households and employs 256 people from the Kiepersol community. Most of the employees are women.
CPA secretary Zelda Maseko says the CPA grows bananas, avocados, macadamias, and other high-value crops. “As land reform beneficiaries, we have been able to establish partnerships that have enabled us to make this land profitable,” she says.
“The majority of the workers here are women. This is our intervention to directly empower women from the area. We also produce ginger and 100 part-time workers have been employed for that part of the farm produce.”
Maseko says the CPA believes that women can play a significant role in farming, and that similar initiatives can significantly narrow the unemployment gaps in communities and improve employment opportunities and skills for more women.
In their own way, she believes, they have made a dent in unemployment in their community.
Consultants who make a difference
The CPA owes part of its success to the Vumelana Advisory Fund, a non-profit organisation that assists beneficiaries of land reform programmes to develop their land effectively and sustainably.
“We are proud to be associated with this project and to have been involved in supporting the Giba CPA,” says Vumelana chief executive Peter Setou. “This bears testimony to the fact that closer collaboration of private-sector players and land-owning communities is critical for sustainable land reform.”
Vumelana facilitated partnerships with prospective investors, who provided much-needed finance and technical expertise to enable the community to make their land profitable, the CPA says in a press statement. Maseko points out that the strategic importance of these partnerships should never be underestimated.
Commenting on land reform in general, Maseko says it is a “futile exercise” to award people land, particularly agricultural land, without complementing that with training on how to use the land productively.
A long way to go for women
Despite the success they have achieved, Maseko says the CPA still faces structural and cultural challenges. For as long as stereotypes persist that women cannot perform certain functions, equal representation will remain a dream, she believes.
To address this, the reform process should become more inclusive and provide full and equal opportunities for both men and women.
“[Women] too should be afforded an opportunity to become farm managers and human resource personnel, as opposed to being relegated to the periphery or confined only to administrative roles,” she says. “These stereotypes are some of the challenges that impede women from making their mark in the agriculture sector. Our communities still do not have a commitment to embrace the potential of women in agriculture in management roles.”
She advocates for proper skills sharing with women and believes this could be done through interventions such as intensive training and regular workshops.
“Our land reform process could play a meaningful role to eradicate poverty and unemployment, particularly for women from previously disadvantaged communities. In our committees and associations, we need to ensure that we strike a balance regarding equal representation,” she says.
“Admittedly, a lot has been achieved in the sector but more still needs to be done to uplift women. We would like to see land reform creating more opportunities for our community, particularly for our women.”
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