Nellie Brand
“My name is Magdalena Isaaks. I was born in 1945 in Warmbad. I am a Nama-speaking Namibian and I live in Gibeon. I sew for a living.”
This is the wording on one of the cards that introduced individual artists from remote communities in South Africa, Namibia and Zambia at a craft exhibition at Kirstenbosch in Cape Town last week. The exhibition coincided with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Cape Town last week.
The card shows a photograph of a face behind a sewing machine. “It puts a face to the artwork and place the crafts in context,” says Jo Rogge, well-known Namibian artist and the coordinator of the craft exhibition at the International Symposium on Desertification.
The exhibition carried messages of the importance of alternative income-generating projects in areas where land degradation has taken its toll on communities. The communities participate in an ongoing process in Southern Africa that emphasises community involvement in the combating of desertification to reduce land degradation. Most crafts were made from natural resources and emphasis is placed on using the resources in a sustainable way.
Rogge explains that the exhibition was also “a learning experience for them not just to make their crafts, but also to market and sell it properly”.
Another card told the story of Oom Piet Salamo from Langkloof (Wupperthal) and the wooden boxes he makes. “When it is too hot to work in the garden I go to my workbench in the centre of Langkloof under a very old oak tree and I make wooden boxes using local cedarwood.”
Organically grown rooibos tea from Langkloof and Suidbokkeveld in the Northern Cape was also on sale.
Among the products on display by communities of the Namib desert was cosmetic oil made from the endemic !nara plant, traditionally harvested by the desert-dwelling Topnaar community. Other crafts from Namibia included traditional baskets from the Onkani community in the northern Omusati region, unusual bags from goat skin and animal figurines made from hide from the Gibeon area, beadwork from natural material, wirework and wood-carvings.
Cape communities also exhibited.
Rogge is the founder and former director of the John Muafangejo Art Centre and coordinator of the Tulipamwe International Artist Workshop in Namibia. She coordinated the exhibition on behalf of the Desert Research Foundation of Nambia that organised the symposium.
The symposium formed part of the Desertification 2002 Conference held in South Africa and Namibia recently. The conference focused on the importance of community involvement in decision-making, land-use planning and the use of science and common sense in addition to traditional knowledge. After the three-day symposium, the delegates visited rural communities to get first-hand experience of their efforts to combat desertification.
At a media conference on the symposium at Kirstenbosch Professor Timm Hoffman of the University of Cape Town, and one of the speakers at the symposium, emphasised the particular relevance and importance of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification to Africa.
“Out of all the UN environmental conventions, this is the one for Africa,” he said. “Although there are other critical conventions such as biodiversity and climate change, if we do anything for our environment this is the one that focuses directly on African problems.”