SIBUYISELA ULWAZI Food and Seed Festival
The Sibuisela Ulwazi, held at the Durban Botanical Gardens on the 25-26 of October, was an amazing festival. There was lots of delicious food, singing, African indigenous music, and dancing. All the talks and presentation were informative, relevant and engaging. These were the most inspiring talks for me:
1. Seed and African spirituality by Method Gundidza.
Method shared his knowledge on the importance of seed in ancient African spirituality and traditions. His deep sense of love and respect for nature and his African roots resonated with the audience as he shared ancient stories of the importance of seed. He emphasised on the fact that nature is a being that lives and breaths as we do. We live because nature lives. When we poison nature with Genetically Modified Organisms, we in-turn poison our own bodies. He also shared the fact that seed was a critical prerequisite for the Rain Dance, an ancient African tradition practiced for the purpose requiting rain from mother nature. This is a tradition that is no longer done because the type of seed required has been lost with time.
2. My journey around seed and knowledge by John Nzira.
Interestingly, I actually met John back in my college years, at Limpopo where I was doing my practicals. John, a permaculture trainer, and farmer, began his session with powerful exercise. He asked the audience to hold a seed in one hand and a coin on the other hand and then distinguish the two. The aim of this exercise was to make the audience realize that seed was far more important than money. Seed gives us control and the coin gives power away. He also highlighted the dangers of Genetically Modified(GM) seeds and the enormous threat they pose to our African society. Like the coin, GM seeds take control and power our people over their own lives and shifts it to big cooperates like Monsanto. 3. Blending nutritional compounds and cultural memories by Mpho Tshukudu.
Mpho, a dietitian, and co-author of the book Eat Ting, kept the audience in awe as she shared her knowledge of healthy African foods and how to prepare them. She emphasized the importance of preparing your own food.Some of the interesting facts she shared were: brown and white sugar have the same nutritional value; our African ancestors' diet mainly consisted of vegetables; maize is not indigenous South Africa; and the darker the color of the vegetables, the healthier it is.
4. Stimulating sustainable access to local wild foods by Loubie Rusch
Loubie shared her adventures of discovering everyday plants that we can eat. She also shared information on the SlowFood movement in Africa, and South Africa. She shared some of her cooking recipes with the audience using local indigenous plants. She firmly believes that the best way to conserve our environment is not by erecting fences that keep people away, rather it is by teaching people how to eat these indigenous plants.
Thank you Biowatch South African team for putting together this absolutely amazing festival. Thank you to all the farmers who displayed their work, shared their seed and their cooked food.
