Zhukwe gardening project improves community’s lives

While some communities appeal for assistance in the form of food handouts to the Government and non-governmental organisations, the community in Matshetshe area under Chief Mbiko Mzimuni in Gwanda North, Matabeleland South Province, has defied all odds and sustained itself through irrigation farming.
At least 52 members of the Zhukwe West community joined hands and started a gardening project near Sizabantu Dam in 1985. The garden is called Sizabantu Market Garden and derives its name from the dam and the realisation that it was there to save people’s livelihoods.
The community has never looked back as the garden has developed into being the source of livelihood for the members and the community as a whole.
A Chronicle newscrew visited Sizabantu Market Garden last week and caught up with the members of the project – men and women – as they worked in the garden.
The visit coincided with the commissioning of a new orchard project by the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), which donated to them close to 200 fruit trees and a woodlot.
The members of the ZNA, led by the Commander of One Infantry Brigade in Matabeleland Region, Brigadier-General Thomas Moyo, led the planting of the trees.
The members of the garden project said they were appreciative of what they were getting from the three-hectare garden. They grow crops like maize, groundnuts, beans, potatoes, wheat and vegetables like tomatoes.
Chief Mzimuni acknowledged that his subjects’ livelihoods are largely dependent on the garden. He said families had overcome droughts and hunger and sent their children to school using money they realised from the garden.
“It is from this garden where our children’s livelihood is. The garden is important to people’s lives in two ways – by providing food for daily consumption and money for school fees and other expenses in the households,” said Chief Mzimuni.
He said his wish was to see the garden expanded so that it accommodates more people.
“People are working hard. They have managed to sustain themselves and they need assistance so that they remain viable. I am not saying there is no support but all I am saying is if they are well equipped that could convince others to start similar projects and at the end of the day turn around our community economically and socially.
“This year it looks like we will have a drought but we are assured of something from such projects as this garden and people will be able to sail through. The only problem is that these projects are small scale and need a lot of resource injection to sustain.”
Chairperson of the garden project, Mrs Rosemary Nkazhe, said the garden had become vital to the lives of people in the community.
“Sizabantu started as a co-operative but we were advised that the system was not workable and we should scale it up into a collective project with individuals having their own pieces of land,” she said.
Each member has four beds measuring 1,5 metres by 50 metres where they plant different crops.
Some members were busy preparing land while others are yet to harvest maize and groundnuts before they could prepare for the next planting season. Canals are being built and once completed they will make it easy for the farmers to draw water from Sizabantu Dam through a pipe that feeds the main canal down the slope to the garden.
Mrs Nkazhe said their next crop would be beans. “When we were growing up we did not know that we could block this water and use it productively. Now you do not find households eating umfushwa continuously like our parents did because we can grow different kinds of vegetables. This garden has afforded us good life because we get food and pay fees for our children,” she said.
But the road has not been rosy for the members of the project.
In the past few years, the drip irrigation system they were using was no longer sustainable as the pipes had worn out and were leaking.
“All along we were using drip irrigation but it was no longer manageable. As you can see we have built new canals which we are finalising and very soon we will be starting to irrigate using them.
“We received about 200 bags of cement from Pro Africa, an NGO that has been assisting us all along and they gave us somebody to assist us with construction of the canals.”
Mrs Nkazhe said their market was the surrounding community and at times people came to buy from as far as Gwanda town and Filabusi. She said they have exhibited at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo twice where they have learnt a few lessons.
She said: “We have displayed at the trade fair twice but we saw that as farmers we should not all grow the same crops because that affects the market. There is need for a variety so that we do not compete in the limited market available.”
She appealed for assistance in the form of seeds and other inputs so that they increase production.