GOEDGEDACHT TRUST

“The Path out of Poverty Programme (POP)”

ELANDSKLOOF FARM ENUMERATION

REPORT

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Contents:

1. Introduction - page 3 - 5

2. Goedgedacht’s Path out of Poverty

(POP) Programme - page 5 - 9

3. The Enumeration Process - page 9

4. The Research Methodology - page10 - 12

5. The Enumeration Results: Our Findings - page12 - 16

6. Conclusion - page 17

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1. Introduction
Background information:
“The Dutch Reformed Church bought the farm Elandskloof in 1861 in order to set up
a mission station. The Elandskloof community trace their history on the farm to
before this time, but they lived on the mission station under the rules set down by the
Church.

In 1900 the state granted a further portion of surrounding land to the Church, stating
in the title deed that it was expressly to be used for mission purposes. At present it
consists of 3100 Ha of which 10% is arable, the rest is mountain. The community
assisted in the payment of the surveying and transfer costs.

From the early 1940s, however the neighbouring farmers pressurised the Church to
sell the farm….The Church complained that the community did not pay its taxes and
that the farm was an economic drain on its resources. During that period various
new racist laws, especially the Group Areas Act of 1950, were passed.

In the early1960s, the State and the Church jointly decided to scrap the clause in the
title deed limiting the land for missionary purposes. The Church was then able to sell
the land to a neighbouring farmer……
In 1962 the new owner, a white farmer, evicted the Elandskloof community, living on
the recently sold Elandskloof Mission Station. This was after a long period during
which the community had tried to defend their land rights by negotiating with and
appealing to the church, the State and the farmer. Their leaders had been thrown in
jail, their access roads and paths to their lands fenced and their animals burnt in
mysterious circumstances.

Eventually, the people were forced off the land and scattered throughout the
Western Cape.

The desire to return remained with the Elandsklowers, especially amongst a group
that were given permission by a nearby farmer to “squat” on his land. Then in the
mid-1980s, the community began to actively struggle to move back to Elandskloof.
They were offered various alternatives but refused them……With the passing of the
Restitution of Land Rights Act in 1994, the Elandskloof claim was automatically
transferred to the new Lands Claims Commissioner. A twenty-month negotiations
process, under the auspices of the Land Claims Comissioner and including the
community, the Department of Land Affairs and the owner of the land, then
proceeded and eventually on 20 June 1996 a settlement was reached. This
settlement became an order of court on the 15 October 1996 and the Elandsklowers
took possession of the land on 16 December 1996.

The land was held in a Communal Property Association. Any communal land-holding
arrangement needs to keep a register of the beneficiaries of such an asset. This
forms the basis of the tenure system, the application for state assistance, the
development of cohesion in the community and the granting of real authority to the
elected committees.

Great tension arose as to who qualified to be called an ‘Elandsklower’. There were

125 families who were part of the community that had been dispossessed in 1962.

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As the negotiations proceeded and it became clear that the land would be returned,
many more Elandsklowers heard of the claim and become interested in returning.
The list started growing. By April 1996 there were 208 families on the list, by August
1996, 308 families and then by January 1997 there were 350 families on the list.

During this period, the definition of who was eligible for membership also shifted and
broadened”. (The history quoted above comes largely from a document written by
David Mayson and Elsbeth Engelbrecht entitled “Apartheid’s hangover! The
complexity of management and tenure at Elandskloof”. 23rd May 2000).

It is not necessary to go into all this here but various factions developed and the
power and authority of the Communal Property Association was eventually
compromised and all activities ground to a halt. The Department of Land Affairs then
took over in the early 2000s and have been administering this community’s affairs
ever since.

At present no one seems to know how to extract this community out of this state of
paralysis.

Goedgedacht’s involvement:
One of Goedgedacht’s former projects which is now an independent NGO called
GARC (Goedgedacht Agricultural Resource Association) was invited to help
Elandskloof to develop their agricultural potential. They realised that the problems
that Elandskloof community faced could perhaps benefit from what Goedgedacht
Trust was doing with the youth in the Path out of Poverty (POP) Programme.
Particularly the work around developing and strengthening youth leadership which
might in time heal the wounds of the past and lead this community out of its present
static state.

A meeting was organised and Ingrid Lestrade (Programme Co-ordinator of POP)

and Peter Templeton (Director of
Goedgedacht Trust) were invited to
talk to a small group of residents.
Gazelle McDougal from GARC
introduced them and they did a
presentation on what they could
offer on condition that they were
able to access funds to do so.

The presentation was positively

received by those present and
several other meetings were
attended by the Goedgedacht staff
where presentations of the Path
out Poverty (POP) Programme were made to various groups that included the
steering committee that consisted of various members of the decided clusters for
Elandskloof, Mediation and Transformation Practice (MTP) and the Department of
Land Affairs.

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Goedgedacht Trust was given permission by the Elandskloof community who
attended a community meeting on Saturday, 8 November 2008 to conduct an
enumeration study from Monday, 15 December 2008 – Friday, 19 December 2008
which would be the first phase in the replication process of their Path out of Poverty
(POP) Programme’s Youth Project. It is with this aim in mind that this report was
compiled.

2. Goedgedacht’s Path out of Poverty (POP) Programme

Goedgedacht Trust:
Goedgedacht Trust runs a rural development Centre; 87 km north of Cape Town on
the slopes of a small mountain range called the Kasteelberg. This old and beautiful
Cape Dutch farm, dating from 1704 is 171 ha in extent, and now offers itself as a
resource to the surrounding Swartland / West Coast area for development initiatives.

The Trust is registered as a Charitable and Educational Trust (T965/93) in terms of

the Non Profit Organisations Act as No.006/582 and as a Public Benefit Company
which allows individual donors some tax relief on receipt of donation to the Trust.

The Trust was registered in 1993. It took 3 years to renovate and upgrade the
buildings and the Centre really started in 1996 with the appointment of full-time staff.

The flagship programme of the Trust is called “The Path out of Poverty” (POP)
Programme for farm workers and their children started in 1998 and have been
implemented for the past 10 years.

The Philosophy of the Trust:

The Trust is concerned with issues of poverty as it affects the lives of the rural poor.
It is particularly interested in the needs and aspirations of new farmers and farm
workers from previously disadvantaged communities.

The philosophy of the Trust is very simply to:

Build People
Strengthen Community
Promote Democracy

The Trust’s projects:

The Trust operates at three levels, Local, Regional and National.

Local Interventions:
(a) The Path out of Poverty (POP) Programme
We are at present working on 32 farms and touching the lives of 1332 individuals.

The farm workers in this region have been trapped in poverty for many generations.
Many of today’s problems were caused originally by the “dop system” where
labourers were paid part of their wage in wine. This has now been outlawed but the
results remain. The effects of poverty are evident everywhere, poor education,
alcoholism, violence to women and children, very high rates of children born with
foetal alcohol syndrome, lack of self-esteem and skills amongst young people, men
and women, shockingly high rates of TB and now increasingly HIV/AIDS all take
their toll on the quality of life of children.

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The vision of the “POP” programme is to create a healthy, self confident, well trained
farm worker community. We concentrate on building the self esteem, capacity
and skills of the youth, the next generation, in order to help them avoid the
damaging behaviour of the generations before them.

Our experience has been that one good project does not help people break the
stranglehold of poverty. We have therefore, over the past 10 years, put in place an
integrated community development model which is made up of number of (currently
17) interlocking projects which farm workers and their children can access at any
point.

There are three golden threads which weave their way throughout the POP
Programme, these are:
Personal development, Education and Health

The bottom line is that we do everything possible to “KEEP CHILDREN IN

SCHOOL” for as long as possible and help them during this time to heal, strengthen
and reach their individual potential.

The programme includes the following projects:

• Parenting skills training.
• a specialised crèche and pre-school (with special attention being given to the
problems caused by Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and Foetal Alcohol Effect.
• a Youth Project- weekly – and holiday programmes for farm youth.
• an educational support project offers school fees, uniforms, school stationery,
warm clothing etc for farm children and those orphaned by AIDS.
• Self development workshops for men and for women (farm workers)
• Community activities – choir competitions, sports days. HIV/AIDS awareness and
prevention courses.
• After school educational support for children. 5 days a week 4-6pm Library,
access to computers. Homework supervising. Hot meals, showers, life skills,
comfort and encouragement.
• Home Based Care Training. 15 trained carers in the community
• So far we have 8 Safe Houses for children on farms where trained farm good
women who have been trained in Home Based Caring Skills look after orphans
and vulnerable children over weekends when parents are drinking and become
abusive, keeping them safe from harm and offering them shelter, food and a
caring environment.
• Food security 840 hungry pre-schoolers from 9 different pre-schools and sites
getting a daily bowl of e-pap a highly nutritious porridge.
• The Valley Deli run by older youth makes sandwiches for 94 children each day
before they leave on the school bus. A hot meal is provided each afternoon for
64 children attending the after-school project.
• Organic vegetable gardening training.
• Community Cycles. (BEN – The Bicycle Empowerment Project) Repairs and sells
bicycles at low cost to rural dwellers to encourage health and rural mobility.

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• Sport. “The Valley Eagles Rugby and Netball Club” has nearly 90 members and
involves members and the community in sport including more recently
Indigenous Games and Soccer.
• Documentation. A community worker is employed to visit farms and help farm
workers to get the documents (birth certificates for their children, Identity
documents for themselves) in order to access social grants such as the Child
Support Grant, Foster Care Grants, Old Age pensions.
• Saving groups being started on farms and in two small rural towns in the district.
• LOOP –‘Weltevreden se Doen en Late’. A photo story book of which 18 000
printed each month and distributed to the poorest farm workers in the Western
Cape.
Each edition addresses an issue important to rural people. It brings literacy skills
to farm workers as well as information.

After ten years of work on the POP programme for rural youth the Goedgedacht
Trustees have approved an expansion plan which will work to replicate certain
aspects of the POP model programme in other areas where similar situations of rural
poverty exist.

Our vision for the next ten years (2009 – 2019) is 10 000 rural children helped
onto the Path out of Poverty from five rural POP centres.

(b)Local Climate Change Projects

As young people are - the next generation - our priority it seems right that the
Goedgedacht Trust should also have an abiding interest in climate change and the
future of our world, for without it there would be no future for our children.

We aim to become carbon neutral as soon as we can and are experimenting with a
range of energy options - solar panels on all our buildings, a bio-digester which is
producing methane for cooking in the Conference Centre at Goedgedacht, earth
brick making and wonder bags.

We hope that organisations and individuals will visit Goedgedacht and learn from the
lessons that we will uncover as we go ahead.

Regional Interventions:
In response to needs in the broader community of the West Coast Swartland region
the Trust has nurtured a number of projects at Goedgedacht some of which are now
independent and operating from the nearby town of Malmesbury.

These are:
• GARC (The Goedgedacht Agricultural Resource Centre) which works to enable
and support smallholder farmers. Now independent from Goedgedacht trust and
operating from Malmesbury.
• The West Coast Community Foundation. Capacity building and grant making for
small community organisations. Also independent now and operating from
Malmesbury.
• WEKUFU (The Wes Kus Ubuntu Farmers Union) A union for small farmers
offering resources and support. This project grew up at Goedgedacht farm and is
now independent and operating from offices in Malmesbury.

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• GOFA. The Goedgedacht Olive Farmers Association funded by the Dutch Postal
code Lottery is involving emerging farmers in the olive industry. At present 64
farmers are growing olives with Goedgedacht support and backup.
• C3 Climate Change Crops. A new project started in 2008 is introducing the
concept of climate change to emerging farmers and giving them information and
advice on appropriate crops for a region that will become drier and hotter.
• The last two quoted projects are supported by an Equipment Pool housed at
Goedgedacht farm and supported by the regional co-op Agri WesKaap.

National Interventions
South Africa is a fragile new democracy. It needs constant strengthening on every
possible level. It needs vigilance. It needs critical debate on issues of national
importance.

Goedgedacht’s response has been:

(a) The Goedgedacht Forum for Social Reflection which every second month
brings together policy makers, planners and people of differing opinions at
Goedgedacht farm to debate and discuss issues of national importance.

Themes of the past years have been around the economy, poverty, education, crime
and this year the focus will be on sustainable development and the upcoming
elections. A record of recent debates can be found on the internet at
www.goedgedachtforum.co.za.

(b) Project 90 x 2030

Goedgedacht Trust’s climate change project run from an office in Cape Town sets
up 90x2030 clubs for youth, targeting affluent schools, striving to conscientise them
to climate change and show them how to measure their carbon footprint.
The website is www.project90x2030.org.za.

Long Term Sustainability of the Goedgedacht Trust’s Projects

From the start the Trustees have had a plan for the long-term sustainability of its
work. At present we still have to rely on donors and friends from overseas and from
South Africa. Our Conference and Workshop Centre at the farm (we have 67 beds
and a beautiful Chapel where we host baptisms, weddings and funerals) produces
an annual income which covers some of the Trust’s running costs.

The Goedgedacht Olive Peace Grove will bring in the

income we need to continue our projects in
perpetuity. So far nearly 9000 olive trees have been
planted over 27 hectares from which we harvested 60
tons of olives in 2007.

A very good Extra Virgin Olive Oil is made on the

farm from our own olive press. We anticipate making
a profit from Goedgedacht Trading Pty Ltd within the next couple of years.

Friends of Goedgedacht support this project by donating an olive tree at R300 and
for this they receive an olive tree and the opportunity to make a 16 word dedication,
which is cast in metal and put up on a dedication wall in the Olive Peace Grove.

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The dedications are blessed at a service which takes place in the olive grove four
times a year.

3. The Enumeration Process

The Elandskloof enumeration process was conducted with two goals in mind of
which the first was to gather the information that Goedgedacht Trust require to asses
whether a need exist for a Path out of Poverty (POP) Youth Programme and the
second to spark and encourage community participation amongst the young people
of Elandskloof in an attempt to build their confidence, communication and
community skills.
The richness of participatory surveys
of this kind is that it can become the
basis of community strengthening and
transformation.

The lack of correct information on

communities often prevents rural
people from taking advantage of our
new democracy and from participating
actively in the IDP (Integrated
Development Plan) debates around
resources and services. Information
gathered from enumeration process
conducted in other communities, both formal and informal; indicate that communities
find the information collected to be a useful tool in their negotiations with local
authorities around issues such as the distribution of resources and services.

Community enumerations can be the means whereby the poor can identify their
needs and have the means to negotiate better and more successfully for a better
allocation of basic services.

In this case however we were primarily interested in gathering accurate community

information which could be used in the process of replicating the POP Youth Project
on Elandskloof farm.

A real attempt was made not to see the enumeration study objectives on Elandskloof
farm as one dimensional, but as a process that could spark a series of responses
from all the young people who participated in it.

There is a magical quality to creating knowledge out of seemingly individual

information. Instead of being the objectives of research which is usually the case, in
an enumeration process people pool what they know to gain knowledge of their
community. The excitement spreads and creates a growing motivation. It is this
enthusiasm that leads to community mobilization around issues of concern such as
the lack of positive spaces in our rural communities that supports, inspires and
motivates the young people to contribute positively and actively to the enhancement
of our rural communities.

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4. The Research Methodology
Goedgedacht Trust has so far completed two enumeration studies, one in the rural
village of Riebeek West in the Western Cape Province and another in Ga Phasha
and Ga Mampuru in the Limpopo Province with the view of establishing Rural POP
Youth Centres in both these areas. The questionnaire used in the Elandskloof
enumeration process had therefore been tried and tested.

The questionnaire (see ANNEXURE 1) comprised of questions relating to housing,

accommodation, transport, employment. Goedgedacht Trust was particularly
interested in information relating to the size of the household and number of children
and youth presently living in each dwelling, their ages and school standard.

As one of the key ingredients of the Path out of Poverty (POP) Programme is to
assist rural people with applying for and receiving their documentation to make it
possible for them to access their entitlements successfully, the questionnaire also
included questions on identity documents and state grants.

As mentioned in the introduction, Goedgedacht Trust was given permission by the

Elandskloof community who attended a community meeting on Saturday, 8
November 2008 to conduct an enumeration study from Monday, 15 December 2008
– Friday, 19 December 2008 which would be the first phase in the replication
process of their Path out of Poverty (POP) Programme’s Youth Project.

The enumeration study was conducted and completed by a group of 45 young

people consisting of 35 young people from Goedgedacht Trust and 10 young people
from the Elandskloof community. These young people attended an enumeration
training workshop where after they were
divided into 6 smaller groups. Each
group consisted of members from the
Goedgedacht Trust Youth Project and at
least one or two young people from the
Elandskloof community. They were
responsible for drawing a map of their
specific areas; identify the number of
houses in those areas as well as
completing all the questionnaires for
those identified areas.

The young people managed on the first

day of the enumeration process to walk more than 10 km in over 40 degrees celcius
to complete 52 enumeration questionnaires. This left them with 18 questionnaires
which were completed in the same conditions the following day. The enumeration
forms were checked after each day and the experiences of the young people who
were involved in this process were shared and any problems that arose were
addressed in the group.

Only one woman who is over 90 years old initially refused to give any information to
the group of young people who visited her on the first day, but the same group was
successful when they went back to her the following day.

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The following pictures illustrate the experiences of the youth during the enumeration
process.

“One group of enumerators about to start their walk” “Trying to find the houses to enumerate”

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 “one youth from Goedgedacht and another from Elandskloof completing an enumeration form”

5. The Enumeration Results: Our Findings

The following summary was made from the information that was gathered from the
completed questionnaires completed by the enumerators.

The 45 enumerators walked more than 10km in very hot conditions (more than 40
degrees celsuis) visited 70 households and completed 70 enumeration forms over a
period of 2 days.

The 70 households had a single respondent, who gave information about the
household occupying the dwelling.

The findings were divided into the following categories:

A. Types of Dwellings
B. Gender Profile
C. Age Profile
D. School Profile
E. Employment Profile
F. Grants and Documentation Profile
G. Church Affiliation Profile

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 A. Types of Dwellings
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caravan other house

1% 6% 37%

house

shack

caravan

other

shack
56%

The data collected indicates that the 70 dwellings comprise of 206 rooms (roughly 2.9 rooms per dwelling) and house 288 people in
total. This total further translates to 4.1persons per dwelling and 1.4 persons per room.
B. Gender Profile

TYPES DWELLINGS ROOMS PEOPLE MALE FEMALE

Shack 39 108 149 80 69
House 26 84 107 52 55
Caravan 1 1 2 1 1
Other 4 13 14 7 7
All 70 206 288 141 147

The study reports that the occupants to be 147 females and 141 males. There are
less female occupants (46%) living in shacks than male occupants (54%) and more
female occupants (51%) than male occupants (49%) living in houses.

C. Age Profile
The occupants of these 70 dwellings were categorised into six age groups,
convenient for assessing the various needs of the community. It appears from the
study that the children and youth between the ages of 0 and 30 years are 155 in
total and this figure represents 54% of the total population of the Elandskloof
community.

120
113

100

89

80

60

40
35

20
20 17
14

0
children (0 - 3 years) children: (4 - 6 years) children: (7 - 13 years) youth: (14 - 30 years) total pensioners other (31 - 59 years)

D. School Profile
The study further reports that 72% (64 of a total of 89 children that are 18 years and
younger) of the children regularly attend school. The total number of primary school
children is 35 and high school children are 29. It is however not clear from the data
collected how many young people have matriculated and are studying further.

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E. Employment Profile

Employment Profile

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
employed: part-time / employed: permanent employed: self- unemployed: not unemployed: looking
seasonal employed looking for a job for a job

The study indicates that although there appears to be a very low unemployment rate
(only 15%) in this community, the majority of the adult people (63%) are employed
as seasonal / part-time employees, followed by a total number of 17% permanent
employees and 5% people who are self-employed.

F. Grants and Documentation Profile

The total number of grants was noted per household and the study reports that a
total number of 83 people receive grants in this community and this figure represents
29% of the Elandskloof community. The people receiving pension grants are 24%
(20) and 76% people receive disability, child support or foster grants.

The study reports that 100% of the people who are legible for having an identity
document are in possession of this document and 100% of the children have a birth
certificate.

G. Church Affiliation
The study reveals that the 70 households are members of 12 different church
denominations. The majority households (37%) belong to VGK followed by 24% of
the households that indicated that they were Christians. The following graph
illustrates the various church denominations to which the Elandskloof community
belongs.

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 6% 1%
6%
1%
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ags
6%
apostel

bpk

broederbond
7%
christelike broeders

christen

crusaders

37% heilige gees

morawies

new apostolic

revival ministries

vgk
24% none

1%

3% 6% 1% 1%
6. Conclusion
The findings indicated in the previous section that the children and young people
represents 54% of the population of the Elandskloof community. This figure indicates
that the Elandksloof community would hugely benefit from the establishment of a
POP Rural Youth Centre in this community.

It is important however to highlight that unless the young people has a central space
(building) that can be used regularly (meaning at fixed times) by the children and
youth to implement youth activities, this project will not be successfully replicated.
The reason for this is that the newly renovated school building that is currently being
used for community activities are used by various groups within the community. No
system is in place for the usage of this building and the issue of which group gets to
use the building when will always open the door for some friction to arise between
various groups with this small community. It is therefore recommended that
permission is given to Goedgedacht Trust to enter into a long-term agreement (at
least 15 – 20 years) with the Elandskloof community and or the Department of Land
Affairs to renovate the “Old Pastorie” building that could be used for the replication of
the POP Youth Project. It will be very difficult without a central building to establish a
sustainable project in this specific community.

The second finding of the enumeration study that has to be highlighted is the fact
that the majority (63%) of the adult people remained seasonal or part-time farm
workers on other farms in the region and only a small minority (5%) of the adults are
self-employed when the reality is that they have become owners of land more than
12 years ago. This alongside the fact that 72% of the children of school-going age
are attending school regularly is a positive indication that the levels of education
amongst the community members are higher than the current community in which
the Path out of Poverty Programme has been very successfully implemented over
the past 10 years. It can therefore be carefully mentioned that by establishing a POP
Rural Youth Project in the Elandskloof community over the next 20 years will ensure
that the employment will look very different to the one contained in this report in that
more young people will hopefully through the project matriculated, completed a
tertiary education and contributed positively to the enhancement of the Elandskloof
community.

This main outcome of the community enumeration study that was conducted and
completed by the 45 young people of the two communities of Goedgedacht and
Elandskloof was that it highlighted the need for the establishment of a POP Rural
Youth Centre from which children and young people can access various youth
activities that will assist them in reaching their full potential and living healthy and
happy lives by making a positive and active contribution to the enhancement of the
Elandskloof community.

We are very thankful to the Elandskloof community, Department of Land Affairs and
Mediation and Transformation Practice (MTP) for giving Goedgedacht Trust their
permission to conduct and complete this enumeration study. Thank you to the
children and young people of Elandskloof who allowed the Goedgedacht youth to
share their POP story with them and participated in the various activities that were
offered during the week. Thank you to all the funders who have made this study
possible by supporting this process so generously. It is much appreciated.

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