17 process that juxtaposes heritage practices, how we do things today and what is now known (Figure 1). Ethuthwini, a Compost Gardening Knowledge Practice In the early 20th Century the communities moved from the harbour area to Red Location were told to stop dumping their waste next to their homes because of outbreaks of plague. Before this the ethuthwini dumping practices of the Xhosa and the izaleni of the Zulu were such that food waste was allocated to a specified space near the homestead. The practice did not produce a smelly dump but a watered place that was high in organic matter so that the seeds removed from foods and dumped grew wild and could be harvested for food. Children could also be taught what foods to collect in the veld so ethuthwini was also a place for the Gogo (grandmother) to teach the next generation what wild foods to harvest, where and when. Insights into ethuthwini practices3 developed from accounts given to RCE members by old women allowed the RCE to replicate an organic dump at the Environmental Learning Research Centre. In late December 2011, the ethuthwini process happened spontaneously and RCE members arrived back after the New Year to find 12 large pumpkins, along with tomatoes, squash, potatoes and Ethuthwini flip composter The intersecting knowledge landscape for recovering ethuthwini for restoring the knowledge practices using a low-cost aerobic composter. a variety of wild edible plants. In this way the heritage practice has been re-mapped onto the landscape in story outline as indigenous mirror data for examining what is currently being done and what is more widely known in modern disciplinary knowledge. Throughout this work no opposing perspective between indigenous knowledge practices and institutional propositions was found. This is not to say that differences might not be evident in other spheres. What is of note is that these do not appear to be manifest at the level of practice where there was congruence between the wisdom of ages and what is now known, with the process providing insights into modern waste management practices that currently impact on community health and environment. Planting Indigenous Trees to Restore Biodiversity When forests were abundant they were both a refuge for cattle and people in unsettled times and were places where people could collect the plants they needed for community health. Over the years, however, as forests receded farther away from homesteads there was a need for people to take some of the plants home so that they had health-promoting plants at hand or could build and repair the living fences of plants used to make cattle kraals. To successfully transfer forest plants to the homestead, the elders would teach that, “You must bring the forest with the plant.” In the 1960s when indigenous trees had similarly receded in Makana, people began to plant indigenous trees to make Grahamstown a harbour city. People did not transfer trees from the then distant forests but bought them from the local nursery. Soon they began to say that indigenous trees are very difficult to grow. The trees would start well but then die a year or two later, often during a period of drought. By the 1970s and 80s scientists had discovered that the heat-sterilised potting soils lacked the ecology of bacteria and fungi that was necessary for the growth of indigenous trees with strong root systems that can resist drought. The mycorrhiza found in forest leaf litter and soil was shown to have a hormone that stimulates root growth. They scientifically described this as a mutual relationship 3 T he dump combined village organic waste and wood ash was usually near the cattle kraal so that one had three inputs that produce a rich organic mix for gardening. 117
Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity
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