AfriForum, the family farmer network Saai and the office of kgosi Gaboilelwe Moroka, kicked off a joint indigenous veldt incubation project in the Barolong Boo Seleka kingdom at Thaba’Nchu, east of Bloemfontein in the Free State. The project begins with an initial herd of 21 nguni indigenous veld goats and goat husbandry training by Gerhard Lourens of LGL Indigenous veld goat herd to local small farmers and kgosi Moroka and her team.
The aim of this project is to equip local small farmers with knowledge and skills, to develop subsistence and small-scale farming into profitable enterprises, and also to establish a goat herd that will eventually develop into a sustainable goat farm. This farming will produce goats that will enable further development projects at the grassroots level.
“The truth is that agriculture is the foundation of human survival,” says kgosi Gaboilelwe Moroka, kgosi of the Barolong Boo Seleka. “It is also through the revival of agriculture that we can achieve lasting success. This is the key to food security and sustainability, and to tackling malnutrition, poverty and unemployment.”
She says the veldt goat project serves as a development point for the direction in which goat farming must move in all the rural communities of South Africa. “We would like to express our appreciation to AfriForum and Saai for their continuous cooperation and partnership with the Barolong Boo Seleka in an effort to empower this community to ensure an independent existence. Our future depends on agriculture.”
Theo de Jager, executive board chairman of Saai, says it is a privilege for his organization to make a difference by equipping subsistence and small-scale family farmers with the necessary knowledge and skills to commercialize and modernize their farms. “The support and mentoring role we fulfill makes it possible for these family farmers to develop into commercial farmers who make a contribution to wealth creation, food security, economic growth and job creation.”
Barend Uys, head of intercultural relations and cooperation at AfriForum, says a network of independent cultural communities is established on the basis of mutual recognition and respect within which communities work together to create a free, safe and prosperous future for the children of all communities here at the to secure the southern tip of Africa. “A new social order built on the foundation of community federalism is taking shape at the grassroots level – this gives us hope for the future as it offers interdependent communities here the opportunity to jointly find solutions to the challenges we face in the be faced.”
Joint agricultural development and heritage projects have been successfully undertaken since 2022 following the conclusion of a mutual recognition and cooperation agreement between AfriForum and the Barolong Boo Seleka. These good relations and cooperation are a revival of the good relations established in the 1830s between the Afrikaner and Barolong Boo Seleka cultural communities.
