Farmer Kosie reaps harvest of goodwill
IN many ways, Kosie van Zyl is a typical boer. He is as solid as his bakkie, doesn’t leave the house without a sheepdog, and won’t let guests go on their way without lamsvleis in their bellies.
But when it comes to his farmworkers, Van Zyl is a peculiar phenomenon in the sheep-studded hills outside Bredasdorp, in the Overberg region of the Western Cape.
For one thing, his staff aren’t really farmworkers any more — they are partners and neighbouring landowners. Thanks to Van Zyl, they now own two farms in the district. They also run a large herd of cattle on municipal land surrounding nearby Napier — another Van Zyl initiative.
“Oom Kosie”, as he is known to some of his staff, may be a boer, but he is no baas.
Agri Dwala is a unique farming enterprise that owes as much to the wide range of government and private-sector partners as to Van Zyl’s singleminded determination to transform his community.
To date the 20 beneficiaries (representing 14 families) have produced 9 200 tons of wheat and 7 400 tons of barley. They own a Case IH harvester as big as a house and a 20-ton truck. They own cattle, sheep, a guesthouse, a wedding venue, and will soon host a foster home on one of their farms. They are a rich harvest of success stories in a time of land-reform drought.
And it might not have happened were it not for a stroke of good fortune.
In 1995, when Van Zyl was still a young manager on nearby Fairfield farm, where his family had worked for four generations for the well-known (and welloff) Van der Bijl family, a neighbouring farmer, Oom Cally Otto who had no children of his own, offered Van Zyl first option to buy his land.
“I said: ‘Jislaaik, that would be nice!’ ” Van Zyl explained this week. “But at that stage I had a Citi Golfie [sic] that was only half paid. It was impossible — no ways could I buy a farm. My dad said I must go back and ask if he is serious.”
So Van Zyl went back, and, yes, Oom Cally was serious. So serious that he offered to buy the farm for the young man by lending him the money. Van Zyl promptly married his fiancée, Lize, and moved in. Within a few years they had bought two additional farms and were a farming force in the district.
Oom Cally’s kindness made a lasting impression and taught Van Zyl the value of a helping hand. “Just because one guy gave us an opportunity, we are now commercial farmers. It was just Oom Cally who gave us that chance at the right time,” Van Zyl said.
In 2005 he decided to “pay it forward” by helping his own farmworkers buy land, but the plan got bogged down in red tape. However, thanks to the local Cape Agulhas Municipality he formed a joint venture in 2006 with his farmworkers to lease about 200ha of public commonage around Napier, land that used to be leased to white commercial farmers. Now 190 Agri Dwala cattle graze there.
Van Zyl helped set up the necessary company, Agri Dwala (Dwala is a Xhosa word meaning either hills or rock). He retained a small stake and sat on the board of directors. The other beneficiaries were farmworkers and selected small-scale farmers from Napier.
The group’s track record on the commonage land was key to securing their first farm, three years later, again thanks largely to Van Zyl’s persistence — as well as enthusiastic support from the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.
He said: “The directors of Agri Dwala got into the car, took our financial statements of the previous three years, and made an appointment with them [the department].
“We went to Stellies [Stellenbosch] and put the statements on the table. They looked through the statements, looked at us, and promised to help buy a farm. And they did.”
A few months later the group got a call from Pioneer Foods, who also wanted to help, to the tune of R6-million — a R3-mil- lion grant and a R3-million 15year loan.
With that they bought a second farm, which now has a guesthouse with a renovated shed that doubles as a wedding facility.
“It is going well — on July 1 we have a wedding for 120 people,” said guesthouse manager Margaret Engel. “At the moment there are 16 people in the guesthouse. It’s very hard work and challenging, but I enjoy it.
“I don’t feel that I’m better than everybody because I’m now a shareholder. I must still work,” she said.
Her husband, Marius, said he initially had his doubts about Van Zyl’s plan: “It sounded a bit strange. But we filled in all the papers and had meetings, got together. We thought: ‘Let’s see if it works.’ And it did.”
Van Zyl believes the key ingredient is a shared passion for farming, and mutual respect: “I had the advantage of growing up with the guys, not as the landowner, but as one of them — I’m not the boss. It allows me to work with the guys on another level,” he said.
But it’s not only farmworkers who benefit. Van Zyl and Lize are foster parents to three children, in addition to their own three. The first child was rescued from a children’s home when he was just four.
“They wanted to take him away, but he had already been through so much so I ended up bringing him home,” said Lize. “I just told Kosie: ‘We have another boy in the home.’ ”
Unsurprisingly, they now plan to open a foster home and school on one of the Agri Dwala farms.
Underpinning their work is a spiritual dimension, Kosie said.
“I understand that every one of us is born on this earth with potential and with a purpose.
“I want to be a tool — to help somebody get to their full potential. That is my point of living. If each of us could do that then we can make South Africa and Africa a better place.”
I had the advantage of growing up with the guys . . . as one of them