Hardly a day passes without Refiloe Molefe’s stove being crammed with pots, cooking food for the needy. The urban farmer has always understood the need to grow food and to feed people.

But now hundreds of people who are dependent on the Bertrams Inner City Farm stand to go hungry because of a City of Joburg project to build a multipurpose centre, which includes offices for the city’s Department of Health and Social Development, on the site.

The department’s failure to communicate, make adequate contingencies or to consult broadly mean there are still questions hanging over the centre, which has been in the pipeline for a few years. The first phase of its construction begins this winter.

The new centre will cost an estimated R275-million. The first phase will cost R35-million and is expected to be completed by November.

There are concerns that, because the project includes the building of new offices for the city, spend will be skewed in favour of accommodating the public service’s needs, rather than towards the development of a sustainable facility that will benefit the community.

Questions were sent to the office of the MMC for health and social development, but a response has not been received — despite an extension of the deadline.

There is no clarity on how the community was consulted or about the outcomes of the process.

Youth from the community in Bertrams are seen working land at a inner-city farm run by Refiloe Molefe, Johannesburg. (Photo: Denvor de Wee)

The department has seemingly failed to support the inner-city farm and has not made contingencies for the existing programmes — including preserving the renowned farm during construction.

The city has plans for urban agriculture on the site as one of the features of its new centre.

The MMC’s office was also asked how it planned to ensure qualified staffing of the proposed library, seniors’ centre and women-and-child support facilities and other programmes so the centre does not become another white elephant. The construction, which will be overseen by the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), breaks ground in the next few days.

This will include bulldozing Molefe’s community food garden along with its essential food security networks. It will also disrupt the training programme she runs for young people.

Molefe got to work creating an organic food Eden and a farming and food cooperative on the unused bowling green in Bertrams after being given permission to do so by the city in 2006.

“The vision was always to grow food because people are hungry,” she says.

Refileo Molefe (right) who runs a soup kitchen on a inner-city farm In Bertrams johannesburg is busy dishing lunch for Maria Kock (28) one of the youth from the Bertrams community. (Photo: Denvor de Wee)

Over the past two decades, the soil here has grown rich under Molefe’s careful nurturing. And as her gardens have flourished, she’s also been able to shore up networks in the community.

She grows and sells vegetables and started running an informal soup kitchen on site because so many people came to the farm asking for something to eat.

Molefe also supports local crèches, feeds people who sleep under the nearby Joe Slovo underpass, and essentially turns no one in need away. She has partnerships with the University of Johannesburg, Wits University, Tshwane University of Technology, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and Henley Business School and works with young people who are part of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative.

But the future of her true social development project is now uncertain. When the construction team took over at the site in mid-May, Molefe still had not been told details about her fate.

“I was told we would be accommodated in Eikenhof [more than 20km from Bertrams], but the council didn’t say when or how; no one told me anything.

“I have equipment and tunnels that were donated to the project over the years that also need to be moved. I’m also worried about the youth who were doing their training with me,” she says.

At the sod-turning event on 26 May, Molefe managed to get city officials to tell her verbally that she would be relocated by the end of this week. They also committed to meeting with her.

The meeting did take place, but Molefe has been left without resolutions or written agreements about whether she can return to the site to run the new urban food gardens at the multipurpose centre.

When asked at the event how consultation was done, MMC Ashley Sauls responded: “Are you saying we didn’t do consultation?”

Councillor Ashley Sauls and Member of Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Health and Social Development during a sod turning event in Bertrams, Johannesburg. (Photo: Denvor de Wee)

The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) has stepped in, appealing to the city to make plans to preserve the essential food security network Molefe has created and to make appropriate inventions to support students and youth being trained on the farm.

“There has been a lack of communication in how this has been handled. The co-op and its partners are concerned about the lack of transparency surrounding the relocation,” representatives from the LRC said.

“We call on the City of Johannesburg and the Department of Social Development to urgently provide the community stakeholders with a written undertaking, which sets out exactly what type of support will be provided to allow the cooperative to continue to fulfil the vital social role with regard to food production, food security and training of youth,” the LRC said.

It also requested a written undertaking “that Mam Refiloe and her co-op partners be given an opportunity to return to Bertrams to participate in agricultural activities at the new multipurpose centre”.

For Anthony Kholo of the Cross Ministries in Protea, Soweto, the impending destruction of the Bertrams farm is a tragedy loading: “I used to drive past the farm and one day in about 2016 I stopped and met Mama Refiloe. I told her about the need in our community and since then she hasn’t stopped helping us.

“She is truly a mother to everyone — when she has extra donations even of mielie meal, sugar or clothes she gives it to us. She has helped so many families right up to Zuurfontein and Randfontein.” DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.