Gauteng Smallholder Gauteng Smallholder September 2017 | Page 19

SMART SMALLHOLDERS
Following in her dad’s footsteps
A
s a child, Pretoria
beekeeper Moloko
Mabela paid little
heed to the activities of her
father, himself a beekeeper.
Yet, today Mabela, one of the
country's first black female
commercial beekeeper s ,
owns Native Nosi, a company
specialising in organic, raw
honey. The company takes its
name from the SeSotho word
for bees, nosi , that give it
their product.
For much of her youth
Mabela was away at boarding
school and occupied with
The first article of a new feature on
smallholders who have made a success of
their plots in and around Gauteng, by
feature writer Catherine Bower
other things. When she
graduated from the University
of Pretoria and began work at
the Dept of Human
Settlements, Mabela would
bring honey from her father's
hives to sell to her colleagues.
As word spread of the high
quality honey, Mabela began
taking ever larger quantities of
her father's honey to sell in
Pretoria.
It was then that she bought her first hives and asked her
father to place them with his.
Using the honey she
extracted from these hives,
Mabela began meeting a gap
in the market ~ for raw,
organic honey with no
chemical additives. As
demand for her honey grew,
she began buying her father
out and in 2015, Mabela left
her job to pursue a full-time
career in beekeeping and
children being looked after by
cook, homework to supervise, grandparents while the
parents work, or seek work in
bathtime etc, and then to
the city. Yes, the migrant
bed. Time and energy for
labour system remains alive
gardening? Not so much.
For the rural poor, while they and thriving in the “new”
South Africa. The children
may have the space, a
face long walks to and from
different problem arises.
schools in their areas each
Many households comprise day and are thus not a useful
source of free labour for
weeding and watering. And
the adults, being grandpar-
ents, are often too old and
too infirm to manage manual
labour to any great degree.
Finally, there is a lack of
knowledge, and interest.
From page 16
17
www.sasmallholder.co.za
honey production.
Today she has 80 active hives.
And to meet growing
demand Native Nosi also
buys honey from small rural
farmers, and ensur es that
their price is market related
and fixed , so as to prevent
exploitation of rural farmers.
Mabela says Native Nosi
honey is so popular because
she is able to tell her
customers exactly what crop
the honey is from, which
farm it is off and when it was
extracted.
Continued on page 195
#SAFoodCrisis
Gardening simply isn’t
everybody's cup of tea (to mix
a metaphor).
So if we don't grow our own
fruit and veg, where and how
do most South Africans get
their food? For middle-class
city dwellers that will be
Continued on page 19