The award-winning Masithandane group is selling ‘Ciskei daisies’ at world trade fairs, writes Vukile Sonandzi
With an eye on the environmental catwalk, the women of Grahamstown’s award-winning Masithandane Association are turning ubiquitous ”Ciskei daisies” into fashion accessories that are going down well abroad.
The women have taken it upon themselves to wage a personal war against poverty and environmental degradation by collecting old plastic bags (known as ”Ciskei daisies” for their adornment of shrubs and fences) and crocheting them into attractive hats, bags, flags and mats.
Started in 1991 by six women, Masithandane has grown into a self-help community project with a membership close on 100.
Several members recently took their products to trade fairs as far afield as Europe and Asia. And the group won this year’s Eastern Cape tourism award.
Masithandane co-ordinator, Erica McNulty, says the idea was first conceived when the Grahamstown Area Distress Relief Association was giving out food parcels to pensioners and others waiting for government social grants.
”There was some unhappiness with the parcel system. It just wasn’t enough on top of the pension that people got. The worst scenario was people selling these packets for liquor,” McNulty said.
Kondiswa Ndwayana, who recently returned from a trade fair in Singapore, explained: ”We felt the time was over for hand-outs because people did not value things given to them for free.”
Now the women are flooded with orders from national and overseas buyers who are demanding Masithandane’s fashionably eco- friendly accessories. These include the United Kingdom Club of Soroptimists, the National Tuberculosis Association and various Aids awareness organisations. With unemployment running at more than 70%, many Grahamstown residents rely on Masithandane’s soup kitchen for a square meal. But, soup-kitchen customers are required to ”pay” for their meal by handing stray plastic bags to the Masithandane chefs.
Like many towns in the Eastern Cape, Grahamstown is littered with plastic bags and the scheme helps to clean up the township environment.
”A plastic bag a day makes a difference to people’s health and to the environment,” says a member of the Masithandane group.
But the impact of Masithandane’s work is being felt far beyond the outskirts of Grahamstown. The Eastern Cape Tourism Board took 200 of the group’s beaded South African flags to a marketing roadshow in Canada and the United States this week. And McNulty says they have received an order for 500 of these flags for the upcoming Investors’ Conference in East London on November 7.
Masithandane women also promote cultural tourism by providing Xhosa lunches to foreign tourists as well as running bed- and-breakfast operations from houses in Rhini township outside Grahamstown. Recently a Dutch tourist, Professor Jan Duinkern, spent a night in Tantyi location where he savoured a dinner, bed and breakfast – Xhosa style.
”He was very pleased with the standard of service he received,” says McNulty.
McNulty – fondly known locally by the clan name of Mamcira — believes that bringing tourists to live with families in townships ”helps to erase misconceptions about black communities. Township tourism is a way of bridging worlds previously separate.”
Locals are left with money in their pockets, tourists leave with some cultural awareness, and both parties have the opportunity to strike up new friendships. McNulty’s message to other women trapped in poverty is to ”believe in yourselves”.
But Masithandane is no longer strictly a female preserve. The group now has several male members, including an imbongi (praise poet), a herbalist, a pipe maker, and an artist – Vusumzi Dywili – who has also recently been to Singapore.