SOUTH AFRICA 

An arid, mountainous area located along the west coast of South Africa, the Cederberg is richly endowed with a diversity of indigenous plant and animal species, many endemic. The Cederberg’s valleys were once traversed by Khoikhoi pastoralists, who highly prized their livestock. Milk was an important foodstuff, but the Khoikhoi also relied on their intimate knowledge of the veld and its food sources such as berries, reed stems, tubers, bulbs, wild honey, termites, and small mammals.

This knowledge and way of life was disrupted by the arrival of European settlers in the 17th century who annexed the land and enslaved the Khoikhoi. During the colonial period, followed by apartheid, the Khoikhoi worked as laborers on farms or lived in mission stations. They intermarried with San, slaves, and Europeans, and adopted practices from the dominant European culture such as bread making in outdoor clay ovens. Today, many Khoikhoi descendants still reside in the Cederberg area, but their traditional foodways are being undermined by restrictive conservation policies, privatization of land for elite tourist attractions, and increased access to cheap, highly processed foods with low nutritional value.

To help support endangered traditional foodways, local peoples’ interest in the indigenous resources found in their surroundings was rekindled through a multidisciplinary project, Co-creating Wild Foods Livelihoods in the Cederberg Mountains.

This project has now closed, but it lives on in various forms. This includes the establishment of FynbosMengsels, a collective of local knowledge custodians, who, inspired by the project, are now conducting regular, ongoing meetings where they share their love of indigenous plants and experiment with a hybrid of modern and traditional recipes for food and personal care products. On-going research investigating Cederberg foodways, and links between the landscape, food and identity is being undertaken by a Doctoral student based at the University of Cape Town.

FynbosMengsels and their collaborators are working to revive and stimulate interest in contemporary Khoikhoi heritage and traditional foodways by:

• Cooking for visitors and tourists, using a hybrid of modern and traditional methods, with locally produced and indigenous foods.

• Experimenting and co-developing ways of preserving wild foods, thereby extending their shelf-life.

• Introducing agroecological cultivation of indigenous plants for potential markets.

• Expanding on the current range of culinary and medicinal products which FynbosMengsels sells.

• Documenting local peoples’ recipes and compiling them into an illustrated recipe book.

• Showcasing the work of FynbosMengsels at the annual Wild Flower Festival held in Clanwilliam.

Video documentation

Kosbaar – Foodways Across Ecosystems in the Northern Cederberg

Video Series

People and Plants International, in collaboration with the University of Cape Town, has co-produced a series of short films that capture local food practices and the voices of their custodians, as part of a long-term, community-driven research partnership, centering participatory media. The series explores how film can support cultural preservation and intergenerational knowledge-sharing, fostering grounded, community-led ways of documenting and valuing traditional food knowledge. The series presents a range of Indigenous Plant Wisdom, including the production Gharra Beer, Rooibos, Wild Honey, Sourdough bread, and others.

The Team

Rachel Wynberg, Tracy du Plessis, Loubie Rusch, Jaci van Niekerk, Eva Ross and the Cederberg-based communities of Vleiplaas, Heuningvlei, Grasvlei, Kleinvlei and Wupperthal.

A number of the FynbosMengsels members are depicted in the photographs below.

Partners

The Bio-economy Research Chair at the University of Cape Town, FynbosMengsels, Making KOS