Orchards of Privilege
This study of the Gamtoos River floodplain in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province traces its transformation from an eighteenth-century natural landscape of thick bush into an agricultural zone now threatened by climate change.
The first half of the book explains how missionaries from the London Missionary Society and residents of the Hankey Mission Station introduced irrigation, turning the area into a community of small-scale farmers. Despite early failures, by 1849 they had constructed South Africa’s first major irrigation tunnel and aqueduct. However, conflicts between the missionaries and residents led to the loss of communal lands to privatization, which ultimately impoverished the local farmers.
The second half explores efforts to develop the valley for large-scale agriculture, addressing challenges like drought, flash floods, and saline water. By the mid-twentieth century, Afrikaners dominated the area, benefiting from the construction in 1970 of the Kouga Dam, which provided fresh water for the floodplain. This led to the rise of a wealthy white farming community, sustained by apartheid policies and labor from the “Coloured” and African populations. In the early twenty-first century, however, this prosperity has become threatened by severe droughts linked to global climate change.
In view of these historical transformations, the Gamtoos River floodplain exemplifies the complex interplay between human ambition, environmental challenges, and sociopolitical forces.
Robert Ross is a professor emeritus of African studies at the Leiden University Institute for History. His books include Things Change: Black Material Culture and the Development of a Consumer Society in South Africa, 1800–2020 and The Borders of Race in Colonial South Africa: The Kat River Settlement, 1829–1856.