Success on the horizon

Where there was once overgrown grass among the scattered rondavels, cane now grows in abundance.
Seven hundred and fourty four hectares of cane is spread over the areas of Mansomini, Daka Daka, Mthandeni and Snamfini that make up the Qwabe community, with another 350 hectares still to be planted in Mthandeni.
This is the result of a land reform project that took off in 2009 and is making outstanding progress in the rural Glendale Valley, near Ndwedwe.
There is a willingness and vibrancy among workers that is palpable. They are proud of their work, this is their land, their project.
“The community is very, very happy,” said Philani Sibiya, agricultural manager for the Glendale Valley development. “More than 600 new jobs have been created.”
Philani himself is an experienced manager whom the community brought on board at their own expense.
As part of a comprehensive rural development programme, the initiative was taken up by Gledhow Sugar Company, which received a R3.5 million loan from government to get the project off the ground.
On a recent tour of the Glendale Valley, Gledhow vice-chairman Paul de Robillard and land reform manager Gordon Spalding explained that as the project started to take shape, government was so impressed that it came on board with subsequent grants of R13.8 million and R22 million.
“It is about creating a self-sustaining development in which everyone is involved.”
The mill teamed up with the community in the area, forging a good relationship with the chief and community leaders and offering guidance while the community took the decisions.
“We do not tell, we sell the concept and principle around the project,” said Spalding, emphasising that the social upliftment of the people was imperative in creating a self-sustaining farming development.
Four years down the line and the results are easy to see.
“Sugar Cane, Our Green Gold” is the slogan displayed across proud signs erected by the Qwabe community, while trucks, again bought by the community, work busily beneath the overhanging cliffs of Glendale Heights.
Forty tonnes of butternut and 30 tonnes of green beans, as well as a substantial amount of cabbage, are grown in the area to be used for school feeding schemes run by Ilembe district municipality.
Although it is necessary to supplement cane growing with irrigation due to low rainfall shortage, the valley has some of the best soil in the industry, according to Spalding.
The five year contract which the community signed with the mill entitles them to a fixed price from the mill for their cane.
Total expected turnover for the cane once it has all been planted, according to de Robillard, is around R38 million, of which R19 million is to be spent for community employment.
According to the community’s local champion, Siyabonga Madlala, the workers are comfortable in the knowledge that they will be paid a wage every month, and 84 beneficiaries who work on the land enjoy dividends of the profits at the middle and end of each year.
After the expiry of the contract next year, the mill will take a back seat, aiming to have provided the expertise to allow the community to forge ahead independently.
Nonetheless, according to Spalding, the mill “will continue to grow the good relationships we have established with the community”.
“We still have a long journey ahead. We will only be able to say in the next five to 10 years whether it is a true success,” said de Robillard
Perhaps most telling of the effect the project has had on people in the area are the words of the community’s ‘old matriarch’, Victoria Khuzwayo, who was instrumental as a voice of the community in bringing the project to Glendale Valley: “I am so, so happy. This is what my mother dreamed of, and now it is coming true”.