00:09:26.760But what started happening also was that in South Africa,
00:09:29.840we have the African National Congress, who is our national government, but then within
00:09:36.680our province, so we have different provinces, like I guess you would have states, but it's
00:09:42.040not the same thing. But we have different provinces. And in our province, which is the
00:09:46.180Western Cape province, we have a different party in government. So our local government is the
00:09:51.760Democratic Alliance. So it's different to the rest of the country. And it's very controversial
00:09:56.580because they are kind of very liberal and there's a group called the the water coalition who was
00:10:03.840formed in january of this year really to look at why this whole day zero story happened because
00:10:10.060all of a sudden the drought has been going on for years and now all of a sudden there's this
00:10:15.500hassle for people to stop using so much water and all the emphasis was placed on the people
00:10:20.560and not much on government and the way that government organizes itself around things like
00:10:26.120water and sanitation and in the beginning it was very confusing because a lot of it was because of
00:10:32.040mismanagement and now we start trying to point fingers who do you point fingers to when it comes
00:10:37.080to mismanagement everyone kind of just to use this saying like water for ducks back it was nobody's
00:10:42.300fault and then a lot of other stuff started coming out about the controversies that maybe there
00:10:47.440wasn't a severe drought as severe as they state there was but that this was just a ploy for
00:10:54.060whatever, you know, political power in some other way. And so the Water Coalition came into play
00:11:00.020to watch what was happening and to pull out some kind of truth and to pull out
00:11:04.520a kind of a sense because nothing was making sense. What did end up happening was we managed
00:11:11.400to push off Day Zero, which also fueled a lot of the controversial stories to say that,
00:11:18.320there was never day zero to start with. And then also that we started getting a lot of rain.
00:11:24.760We are naturally supposed to be a winter rainfall area, but it just stopped happening.
00:11:29.200And so now, of course, climate change is a real thing. We feel it. And so the rain has started
00:11:33.780again, but it's still not enough yet. People have been making a lot of changes and are catching
00:11:39.840water. So this is a new thing. People weren't doing that before. But ultimately, what our
00:11:46.100local government has also done is as it usually does is prioritize the wealthy over the poor
00:11:52.460and so water to a lot of the townships that we have which is largely black communities of people
00:11:59.540living in very impoverished situations the water has been cut off for a long time and those are
00:12:06.000the kind of stories that never make it to the media the kind of stories of what are people doing
00:12:11.300in those kinds of situations where you have densely populated areas where many of the houses
00:12:18.520end up also being crèches because a lot of the children aren't, they don't have anywhere to go.
00:12:24.280So people open their homes to children, all of those needs of water for those kinds of situations.
00:12:29.700When you have clinics, when you have even unregistered, you know, like what kind of water
00:12:35.100uses are needed in those spaces and then people get hefty fines if they've used too much water
00:12:42.400and what is the situation when water eventually does get cut off and those stories are not shared
00:12:47.480so it's very much again very complex but it has kind of in the last little bit it has softened
00:12:56.140to a point and I guess that also is in terms of a lived experience because it's been raining and
00:13:02.880It's been a lot cooler, but it definitely has changed the way that people approach water,
00:13:09.320that people, like you'll see on social media, people will be doing their laundry by hand again
00:13:15.800and then asking the question, like, how could we ever have used a machine, all the water that we
00:13:20.000wasted? Or how could we have showered for so long? Or why did we shower every day? Like very
00:13:26.600privileged kind of spaces of water use, but the way that those softly turn a key in our cultural
00:13:33.520practice with water has been very fascinating. And it's been very fascinating to watch,
00:13:40.440especially the elderly who have been able to change so easily. I have friends and also
00:13:47.100friends of mine who told me stories about the kind of changes that people have made. And it's
00:13:53.220It's so empowering, actually, to know that those changes can be made by anybody, yet also to be very mindful that it is such a privilege to be able to make those changes and to be able to even catch water, to be able to redistribute the way that you use water.
00:14:11.580But it's definitely also personally for me changed a lot of how I navigate the city, how I use or do certain things.
00:14:21.960And what I love the most also is the change in concept of hygiene and what we deem hygienic and not.
00:14:30.040So it's definitely an ongoing journey, but it's by far changed a lot of what people have perceived.
00:14:36.800And I also, there was a whole big, everyone was like up in arms and like, no, we're going to have to leave the city.
00:14:45.080So it's been really nice to kind of see how we have this South African culture of tenacity, of people who have been through so much and yet we're still here.
00:21:08.160It really is a situation of, like you were saying, it's all these extractive industries that are using up all this water.
00:21:16.440And if we look at agriculture, if we look at mining, that's where all the water is going, not because of people's overuse or whatever the case is.
00:21:24.720But because of the way government has kind of opened it up to be that the people must stop because the economy is the most important thing and the economy must be able to function as it does.
00:21:34.500it's so obvious that the economy and how the economy is based itself systemically that it's
00:21:41.120very weak and that if it's dependent so much on things that are so finite like resources
00:21:46.500then surely it's not strong it's not healthy it's it's going to fail because those things
00:21:53.000are quickly running out i'm also a kind of a person who i guess i used to call myself an
00:21:59.040optimist, but it's really more of having an understanding that I have to have a healthy
00:22:05.980amount of hope, the future generation that I'll never meet kind of thinking that I enjoy even
00:22:13.520because there's a, how can I say, it might even be an egoism if I can say. I feel a sense of
00:22:22.440kind of a weird selflessness, but also very much about the self and pushing and working towards a
00:22:30.440future that I'll never meet. And I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's actually
00:22:34.120something that I, I guess, somehow have to work through being born in the time that I am in the
00:22:40.560family, in the land, et cetera, et cetera. But to be fundamentally hopeful about the future when
00:22:47.020everything else is showing me that there's not a lot to be hopeful for that forces me to work
00:22:55.120to connect those discrepancies that I see glaringly to be able to foster a kind of
00:23:03.540deep healing that the land will feel that incorporating old but also very new practices
00:23:13.040of ritual, of community, of healing, of medicine, of joy, of even just to kind of act in a
00:23:23.760completely frivolous manner sometimes, just to engage in joy in a way of like kind of
00:23:31.240sweet abandon, or kind of connect in a sense of new optimism that's very grounded in a
00:23:39.020reality. So I'm not kind of blinded by the future is bright and things will always be okay because
00:23:46.540that's how things are. No, things are not always okay and things are very, very difficult. And
00:23:50.900I suffer depression, which I have come to realize is something that's actually very common.
00:23:59.500And having mental health, it's not very common to find people that have always healthy,
00:24:07.340healthy mental health, because I think the way that the world is run, and I'm talking about,
00:24:13.420I guess, in the cities most of all, because that's my experience. There is so much ill health in the
00:24:19.080way that our systems are and the way that the land is traumatized and in need of healing. And
00:24:24.880that infiltrates the people and it infiltrates everything that lives. And so there's a definite
00:24:30.160need to hold that. There's a definite need to understand that and regard that. So that sense
00:24:36.520of optimism isn't blinded and that sense of optimism is embedded in a social, spiritual
00:24:43.140politic that creates as much change as it does towards a healing or towards some kind
00:24:52.260of knitting of a future that includes all those things that we silence and that speaks
00:24:59.520from a much more grounded, truthful way, because even for us, without the work around First Nations
00:25:07.540work and people has been so silenced because of genocide and because of apartheid systems and
00:25:14.160because of colonization, it's even difficult to find those conversations if you don't know where
00:25:20.360they are. So to have that kind of mindfulness, I think, is paramount. I subsequently, we've
00:25:26.440stopped the apocalypse pantry and have kind of been working on our own things and have
00:25:32.380also subsequently realized that that apocalyptic sensibility is also something that I had to
00:25:38.660move away from just to be able to embed myself again in a space where living with depression
00:25:46.060or understanding that depression as a way to heal, like working through it was much
00:25:52.840more healthy for me to not embedded in a thinking of apocalypticism, apocalypticness. A lot of the
00:26:00.100discussion these days is around the Anthropocene and the way that humanity has irrevocably changed
00:26:07.660the planet and the way that the biology and the metabolism of the planet is engaged. I'm trying to
00:26:15.060understand all of that without falling into a pit of depression around, you know, because it's so
00:26:22.800overwhelming and there's so much trauma and so much grieving and so much healing that needs to
00:26:28.320happen and how to be able to stand up every day and do it requires so much strength but also
00:26:33.320understanding that I personally am carried by so much, by so much spirit and ancestry and people
00:26:41.040and life and have kind of taken it as a sense of duty to do this without fear to do it because
00:26:50.060that's my purpose and it has to be expressed within this specific land so there's a very
00:26:55.980long way to answer your question but there it is oh i so resonate with that reflection
00:27:06.040from the overwhelm and depression and anthropocene desiring apocalypse but also needing to
00:27:13.400take a step back and how to truly prepare oneself for the long journey ahead to continue
00:27:23.300fighting on behalf of the earth and also for future generations that we will never meet
00:27:29.440how we can really sustain ourselves in that work so i i felt all of what you said to close
00:27:36.100out this conversation i want to turn to something that i know is close to both of our hearts and
00:27:42.020that's seeds and africa is yeah yeah and africa is among the front lines of the privatization
00:27:50.060and commodification of seeds with the narrative being spun that in order to address hunger
00:27:56.760local seed systems must be modernized with quote improved varieties and methods ignoring the fact
00:28:04.140that 90 of the seeds sown and 80 of the food produced in africa stems from small scale
00:28:11.620women-led seed systems. So I would love for you to tell us about your work as a seed librarian
00:28:19.300and how the initiatives you're a part of are working to revive African food culture and
00:28:26.760increase resiliency by distributing indigenous seeds. I love it so much, Mayanna. This is the
00:28:33.360kind of work that you die for. In South Africa, like I explained, in the city parts of the country
00:28:39.520Where we have all these endemic food systems that have been going for millennia, yet now we see that the majority of the food that we're eating are foreign.0.79
00:28:54.160They're from Mesoamerica, they've come through Europe and very much changed our diets, but also the landscape.
00:29:00.020So we started some years ago, I think it was in 2012, was the first time that we heard about these feed laws that are pushing for these so-called improved variety.
00:29:12.000And it was such a shock to us because then we'd been working around indigenous food for a while, but not yet through seed.
00:29:18.240It was kind of just finding what the foods were and where they were.
00:29:21.380Because even amongst indigenous cultures, people are not eating these foods anymore.
00:29:25.360so we kind of were on this like hustle like quickly everybody we have to talk about seed
00:29:31.260we have to find the seed where's the seed when i was working with surface people project we
00:29:36.700also had the privilege of traveling the country and working with other organizations other
00:29:40.840farmer organizations other farmer communities and soon found that the discrepancies between
00:29:47.200the east and the west were very obvious so the east of the country of south africa is much more
00:29:52.000fertile the soils are more red they're more brown they're even black they're more tropical areas
00:29:57.060people can kind of produce more variety of food whereas here in the west we are more desert in
00:30:03.220the south it's more mediterranean the soils are much lighter they're not as fertile summer drought
00:30:09.000so you've got almost the limited variety of things you can plant but we can still plant all year
00:30:14.180round but we started to see that the layers that come with that in the east of the country with
00:30:20.120the fertile land, you also had the homelands and people were not forced off their lands.
00:30:24.940There wasn't that severing of people and culture from land. And so you'd find a lot of these
00:30:30.100traditional foods, but also traditional seed practices. Whereas in the west of the country,
00:30:35.180you didn't find that. And where you did find that was in the much more remote areas. For example,
00:30:41.720it would be spaces like where there was no main roads, for example, there weren't any supermarkets,0.99
00:30:48.200there might be telecommunications but very little and then you'd find more indigenous
00:30:53.520beans you'd find varieties that were there for so long you'd find people growing much more
00:30:58.400medicinal foods so a lot of our plants kind of fall under the medicinal range lots of biopiracy
00:31:04.720etc but it's been such a journey because I quickly realized that there's so many of us
00:31:10.600working in these spaces but all under the silo of organization and then maybe academic research
00:31:16.720that we weren't really practicing the seed cultures as we had been
00:31:22.760and we weren't really kind of understanding what those were.
00:31:25.760So it was a lot about reviving cultural practices
00:31:29.760through adopting from other parts of the country or of the world,
00:31:34.900but also trying to find those memories, going to speak to the elders
00:31:39.040and really trying to look at how things used to be done.
00:31:42.660So there's a very funny thing that you find elsewhere in the continent also,
00:31:46.720Often people think that maize is from Africa because it's so known here.
00:31:51.420People are so used to maize as a staple.
00:31:56.920That people have such traditions and ritual practice and festivals around maize and maize seed.
00:32:05.140And actually, as a side note, it's so interesting because when maize did come over to, most likely it came to the Portuguese, but we're not quite sure, a lot of things didn't come with maize.
00:32:15.500For example, no one does nixtamal, so no one is nixtamalizing the maize.
00:32:20.600And so people are just basically eating it straight.
00:32:23.080They're not cooking it or fermenting it down.
00:32:25.800And so it's being digested for generations in a way that the body is not able to digest it.
00:32:31.440Yet it's got such a, people say that it's like the guest that comes to the home.
00:32:37.460You know, you give the guest the best crockery, the best cups, the best plates, the best food, the best seats at the table.
00:32:45.020even though the maize is not from here the maize gets the best space in the land it gets the best
00:32:50.080most fertile ground it gets the best water all of this and a lot of the traditional crops quickly
00:32:56.800became forgotten and so there's a lot of work that myself and a lot of other people and
00:33:00.920organizations are doing to revive these but what i realized that was missing a lot because seed is a
00:33:07.580legacy of life and a lot of people of course other animals too but a lot of people
00:33:14.200become custodians of these seeds, specifically because of different recipes to make different
00:33:20.740things from food to medicines, from gifts to jewelry, growing seeds to make instruments of
00:33:27.540seeds for music. Because of all these cultural relationships we have with seeds, I found it
00:33:34.800imperative to tell those stories and not just the story about the seed laws have come into play,
00:33:41.580They're decimating our seed populations and the livelihoods of our people, specifically the smallholder farmer, specifically the woman, and thus the children.
00:33:49.720That kind of narrative, as true as it is, stops a lot of people in their tracks because they're kind of like, yeah, but what can I do about it?
00:33:57.440Or how does that concern me in my city life, la la la.
00:34:01.360And so it really had to break the story open a bit.
00:34:04.320And this is a lot of kind of the work that I do is around the narratives and breaking the borders or the boundaries of those narratives to be more inclusive and to see how this story, which is maybe seems very separate to you, is actually all about you also.
00:34:19.320That I started as a librarian having to tell those stories.
00:34:26.480And so a lot of our childhood we spent in the libraries.
00:34:29.700She taught in and we'd go on the weekend.
00:34:31.700And so I have this, and my father as well is an amazing storyteller.
00:34:35.540And every night for bed, he would just conjure these magnificent stories.
00:34:39.900So I have this in me to be a storyteller.
00:34:42.720And to do it through Seed has been so effective.
00:34:47.260And we started what's called the Seed Bibliotheque, which means Seed Library.
00:34:51.320And through it, it's about telling stories of Seed.
00:34:54.220At the moment, it just lives on Instagram while I'm figuring out this master's to be able to tell those stories.
00:35:00.740Because when we look at the laws, when we're sitting in parliament hearing the parliamentary, like the seed bill hearings, when we are engaged in these meetings and workshops and conferences and on a continental basis, we have a very specific audience.
00:35:21.820We have a very specific narrative that we work with.
00:35:25.420Governments can only work in a specific way.