- Hugh Masebenza operates the Mhani Gingi veggie stall, a venture born from his mother Lilian Masebenza-Heideman’s community garden NPO, and has seen growing success at Constantia Market Days.
- The Mhani Gingi Social Entrepreneurial Network, founded by Lilian, focuses on alleviating poverty and hunger through urban agriculture and community food gardens, currently running over 25 such gardens across Cape Town.
- Masebenza is supported by initiatives like Shoprite’s Market Day
Running his family-owned Mhani Gingi veggie stall among eagerly browsing customers right at the entrance of a Constantia grocery chain store, Hugh Masebenza shared the success story of his mother’s community garden.
“This is the second collaborative market day we’ve done in the past year, and every time, it yields growing sales,” he swooned while serving one customer after another.
Their reasonably priced fresh greens and organic vegetables lured many a paying customer serving a menu of spinach bunches at R14, cauliflower and stir fry mixes at R18 per pack and broccoli at R20 a head, to name a few.
Hugh has manned this stall twice as part of his mother Lilian Masebenza-Heideman’s bigger booming veggie garden NPO since August last year.
“She turned 75 just yesterday (Wednesday 15 May)!” he told People’s Post during the lunch rush on Thursday 16 May.
On this day, emerging farmers from approximately 50 community food gardens across southern Africa participated in a Market Day hosted at selected Shoprite and Checkers stores.
As one of these, Mhani Gingi Social Entrepreneurial Network is a non-profit organisation founded by Lilian and found its base in Athlone.
“We are committed to finding integrated and holistic solutions to alleviate chronic poverty and hunger in global society. Our efforts are aligned with the United Nations Millennium Development Goal, the Sustainable Development Goals and the South African National Development Plan guidelines.”
According to their website, they have over 25 community food gardens across Cape Town; have trained and employed five women in the Mhani Gingi Organic Herb and Seedling Nursery; plus 25 differently-abled individuals employed in urban agriculture at Uitsig community and empowered 14 registered Early Childhood Development (ECD) creches impacting over 600 children and their families… the list goes on.
Creators of wealth
Mhani Gingi focusses its energy on vulnerable groups in the community to create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.
“This is achieved through urban agriculture, community food gardening and social enterprise solutions which provide skills training and income generation for our beneficiaries, as well as food for consumption.
“We encourage people to become creators of wealth, rather than mere consumers of goods and services and suppliers of labour to others,” Hugh explained.
In this way, they believe their solutions provide self-sustaining solutions for people to support themselves, their families, ultimately trickling through their communities.
All this as a testimony to Lilian’s long journey from her home town in Mpumalanga, eventually having landed a job in the Cape that carved her way to starting her very own publically benefiting organisation.
“In the beginning she garnered her funding by knocking, door-to-door. Tjoh! That lady – she’s great at banging doors,” he joked.
Speaking to this Market Day initiative, Head of Sustainability and CSI (Corporate Social Investment) at the Shoprite Group, Sanjeev Raghubir, said they eagerly support small-scale farmers.
Climate change
They equip them to grow food through agricultural practices that make them more adaptive and resilient to climate change.
“Market Day also gives them the opportunity to generate alternative income by selling their fresh and organically grown produce directly to the public at our supermarkets, and gain valuable retail experience in the process.”
Hunger relief and food security are at the core of the Group’s Act For Change programme. Through this, it supports over 230 food gardens and 4 000 home gardens – covering over 4,5 million m² – indirectly impacting around 60 000 beneficiaries.
Sharing one of Mhani Gingi’s testimonies is Louis Prevost from Oribi Village in Pietermaritzburg, who said: “It’s amazing to see how Mhani Gingi has evolved as a social project. From the days when it was nascent ground, holding potential to a big vision, to arriving at a setup of beautiful community gardens, on its way to a full food value chain solution.”
