The Buffeljagsbaai Sustainable Livelihood Project has brought pride and renewed hope to an isolated coastal community
Robert Davies
‘For as long as the oldest people in our community can remember, we have been dependent on the sea for our existence,” says Marco Boshoff.
Boshoff is one of about 110 people living in the village of Buffeljagsbaai on the Cape south coast, about 230km from Cape Town.
A year ago Boshoff and his community had little hope for the future. Their village had no infrastructure, no shops, no clinic and just three communal taps for 32 households.
“Our only source of food was the sea and when bad weather meant we could not go out to sea we had no way of making a living or getting something to eat,” says Boshoff.
But even the sea could not sustain the community for much longer as overfishing and marine legislation made it even harder to eke out a meagre living.
In October last year change came to Buffeljagsbaai in the form of Rene Hector, an environmentalist and postgraduate student from the University of the Western Cape. She was conducting research for the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s (Deat) Marine and Coastal Management Directorate.
“I was conducting research for my master’s thesis on the needs of coastal communities, driving along the coast from Hout Bay to Arniston to do research on these needy communities.
“I was told about this isolated and impoverished community of about 100 individuals and people said to me ‘You have to find them.'”
When Hector eventually found her way to Buffeljagsbaai she was struck by the plight of the community and set to work developing a relationship with the people of this impoverished community.
“We spoke about their dreams and about what they wanted to do. Some community members wanted a restaurant, others wanted to learn crafts, so we developed a sustainable livelihood business plan and presented it to Deat’s poverty alleviation fund for a grant of R1,4-million.
“I truly believed that God would give us funding to help these people,” says Hector.
The department gave the grant the go-ahead. Cobie Brand of Deat explains the aims behind the Buffeljagsbaai grant. “The Buffeljags project forms part of the Coastcare project, which aims to address the issue of poverty relief among coastal communities.
“One of the aims is to provide such communities with an alternative source of livelihood, as dwindling fish stocks had made it imperative to find a sustainable source of income for these communities.
The project, which is connected to the White Paper for Sustainable Coastal Development, is people- centred and looks at the needs of the community as a whole, says Brand.
In a remarkable twist, Sharon Mattinson, manager of Irvin & Johnson’s (I&J) corporate social investment programme, heard about the Buffeljagsbaai project while searching for a fishing community to benefit from an upliftment project.
Mattinson contacted Hector for more information on the Buffeljagsbaai project, and agreed that I&J would match Deat’s early grant of R1,4-million.
“The programme forms part of I&J’s corporate social development programme. The policy is to bring about positive social and economic change in disadvantaged and impoverished communities.
“I&J annually sets aside 1% of its pre-tax profit for external community development funding,” Mattinson says.
Since funding for the Buffeljagsbaai project was initiated, the community’s daily life has changed dramatically. Henry Dyers is one member of the Buffeljagsbaai community who has benefited from the project.
“My whole life has changed. I used to be a poacher, but now I am a driver, taking members of the community into town with a minibus that was bought using the grant funds.
“This helps a lot, because in the past we had to pay people up to R180 to take us into town,” says Dyers.
Boshoff adds that there is still a drinking problem among some community members, but feels that the community as a whole has benefited enormously.
“In the past, I would have felt embarrassed to ask you into my house for a cup of tea. We did not have anything. Now that the project has made it possible for us to get our commercial skipper’s licences our quality of life has improved.”
“People have started buying furniture and televisions, something we could never do before. You can see the change just by looking at the people.
“To you, R2000 may not sound like much, but for Buffeljags this has been a cash explosion.”
Boshoff is one of three community members who have received their commercial skipper’s licences a first for subsistence fishermen in this country. The community has also bought a fishing boat named Rene which employs 12 fishermen.
Twenty-seven community members also received allocations to commercially fish for crayfish another first for the Buffeljagsbaai community.
Fishing, however, is only a small part of the Buffeljagsbaai project. Other community members are being trained in needlework and weaving with looms bought from a manufacturer in Gansbaai.
By spinning their own wool, community members are able to manufacture goods such as mats, rugs, handbags, beach bags and clothes.
“We sent eight women for training in weaving and spinning at the University of the Free State. The women also made a trip to the Thaba N’chu Sun and now the needlework ladies want to know when they will get a turn,” Hector says.
Plans are afoot to make this three-year project grow further. A community centre, designed by the architect who designed the Grootbos resort, is becoming a reality. This building will house a craft centre and a shop aimed at stimulating the area’s tourist potential.
Schooling is still a problem for the community. Most children attend primary school at Elim and high school in Bredasdorp. This necessitates a very early rise for the community’s children.
Far more sinister, though, is the problem of syndicated perlemoen (abalone) poachers from Hawston near Hermanus who are now moving into the pristine Buffeljagsbaai area. With them come a host of social ills such as drugs and alcohol.
Certainly the people of Buffeljagsbaai, for so long left to their own devices, will not allow poachers’ greed to scupper what they have achieved.
Despite being deliberately marginalised and underdeveloped in the past the community is hoping for a lucrative concession to harvest kelp in future, shifting the emphasis from fishing to sustainable community farming.
In the following two years this project is set to grow even faster and could change even more lives.
As Boshoff says: “Exposure and knowledge are the best kind of wealth. Our people are getting rich from the inside, not only because of money.”