The Earth is Grateful: David, Goliath, Cassava, the Imbokodo, and Some Women's Seed Banks Near Mtubatuba

Abstract

This essay uses the genre of creative nonfiction to reflect on some powerful examples of rural women’s environmentalism in the Mtubatuba region of KwaZulu Natal. Written as an autoethnographic journey narrative, it describes visiting the region over a few days. I begin by meeting three women whose practice of agroecology and prioritising local varieties of farmer-saved seed constitutes both a radical act of resistance to massive seed companies like Monsanto and a forward-looking preparation for climate resilience. I then spend a day with women farmers living near the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi game park, who have been drawn into activism by the ruthless encroachment of the Tendele coal mine on their ancestral land. Here, the term ‘environmental justice,’ a US import which was taken up in South Africa as an extension of the anti-apartheid struggle into the environmental sphere, has become part of the language of rural people. In each case, the farmers’ heart-filled encounter with the multinational giants of monoculture and mining seems microcosmic of our global predicament.