By Nangamso Mabindla
14 March 2005

FOR many years Mdantsane pensioner Themba Goloda dreamed of starting a community garden to help unemployed residents in the area.

He looked around, watching as poverty stricken people in NU1 struggled day after day to make ends meet. Finally, Goloda decided to take action.

The 71-year-old and three other pensioners, from NU2 and NU3, made plans to set up the Sixonke Community Garden.

Goloda approached the provincial Department of Education to ask for help. "The officials bought it," he says. "They were willing to assist me start my modest project."

The Department of Education referred the matter to the provincial Department of Agriculture, who provided Goloda with training, sending him to the Masiphumelele Training Centre in Mdantsane for a course in agronomy - planting crops.

Work on the garden, planted at the WB Rubusana College in NU1, began in 2000.

Since then the garden has bloomed. They grow maize, pumpkins, spinach, carrots, cabbages and other vegetables.

So passionate are the four about the project that they regularly plough their pension money - R740 a month - into the garden.

"We use our grants while we're waiting for the Department of Agriculture to help us with funds." They are also hoping the department will help them to market their produce professionally.

For now, however, they produce enough vegetables to sell locally, while they also give the surplus food to some 60 poor people in NU1 and NU3.

Recently, the Sixonke Community Garden was recognised by the Department of Agriculture as a "progressive co-operative".

"I was delighted to see elderly people making a change in the community through such an initiative - a community garden to help the poor," said the deputy registrar of co-operatives in the Department of Agriculture Elma Pinkham.