Her cell phone had been ringing constantly throughout the day. She was sure it was her micro-managing editor with more ‘quick notes’ or the overtly flirtatious director of a business forum she had interviewed a few days before.
“Why bother having an email address when no one uses it for its very clear and necessary purpose!” she screamed out loud to no one. There were too many things upsetting her but she was in a rush to file her last news story before she clocked out at the end of the day. On the fourth consecutive ring, she finally picked up, trying to muster up the professional demeanour expected of a journalist while suppressing her irritation.
“Hello,” she said, exhaling with a thin, smiling tone.
“Hello, this is Stefan Van Tonder calling from AgriBiz. Am I speaking to Ms. Siphosethu Grootboom?”
“Yes, this is her, how can I help you, sir?” she managed, still sounding a little irritated.
“Do you know Mr. Enoch Themba Grootboom? We’ve been trying to contact Mr. Grootboom but he has not responded to our calls and emails and you were listed in the application as the secondary contact and next of kin.” he said.
“Uh yes, Enoch is my father.”
“Well, I’m calling you about the mortgage loan on the farm.”
“Excuse me, what do you mean there is a mortgage on the farm? How much is the loan?”
“Yes ma’am, there is a R15 million mortgage loan and he has missed the last five payments. Has something happened to Mr. Grootboom? We need to discuss this with our lending department urgently.”
She was connected to the car’s Bluetooth when suddenly the speakers boomed too loud as she tried to listen to what the man was saying. She spotted an open shoulder in the road up ahead of the bumper-to-bumper lunchtime traffic and parked the car there to better focus on the conversation.
“15 million Rand!?” she exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand —my father is fine. When was this loan taken out? What did you say your name was again? Listen, I’m on the road at the moment —is it possible to email me all the details?”
“Yes, of course, my name is Stefan Van Tonder from AgriBiz. I don’t mean to alarm you but the situation is quite urgent and we need to discuss the terms of the repayment urgently,” he said, sounding a bit panicked.
“Yes of course, please send everything we need to discuss to ssethu.grootboom@gmail.com.” She spelt the address out to him again and assured him she would attend to it urgently. After the call ended, she stared at the little digital screen on her dashboard in confusion —what the hell was going on?!
Why was her father unavailable and why did he get a R15 million mortgage on the farm? Why was she the listed contact and why wasn’t he paying? She spent the rest of the day in silence, a thousand worst-case scenarios running through her mind and her anxiety levels slowly rising.
Thank God it was Friday. She had been holding her breath the whole week, working hard to wrap everything up so she could enjoy her scheduled time off in peace. She felt that peace slipping away from her because, whatever the situation with her father was, she knew he wouldn’t tell her on the phone, nor would she believe him because she had no idea about the loan and R15 million was not an amount he absentmindedly forgot to mention. Something was going on and she had to find out what.
*
“I’m so sorry but something has come up and I have no choice but to cancel this weekend, my father is not doing well,” she said regretfully to her boyfriend.
They had been together for four years after meeting briefly at a media conference and then coincidentally running into each other everywhere around the city for weeks after that. It had seemed like fate. He was warm-hearted and interesting in a way the men she met rarely were, so he caught and kept her attention.
They were riotously happy in the beginning but the stresses of work and everyday life soon caught up to both of them. Lately, every conversation between them was a battle to get through, a battle Sethu always insisted on winning, even when she knew she should surrender instead. They had both agreed to take time off and spend four days at the coast. It was difficult for him to file for leave as a senior editor but he had made trade-offs and promises to his team and finally got approved for leave. She feared this was going to cause another fight and was already exhausted when she arrived home to find his excited face cooking in the kitchen.
“What do you mean you have to cancel? Is your father okay?” he asked, furrowing his brows.
He put down the tray of vegetables in his hands and went over to her.
Only a year into their relationship, her mother suddenly died after a short illness. Sethu wasn’t there when everything happened and her boyfriend knew it had haunted her ever since. In many ways, she was still grieving her mother’s death and the thought of something happening to her father terrified him. After her mother’s funeral, Sethu had completely shut down for 8 months. He had tried everything to reach her but the grief pulled her into a depression so deep that she had lost her job and they had had to move apartments because she was unable to work and keep up her side of their living expenses.
“I don’t know all the details yet and he isn’t answering his phone, which means whatever this is, is bad! Some man called me about a 15-million-rand loan and late payments and I don’t know what’s going on,” her panic was rising as she relayed the information to him.
“What?! 15 million!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, 15 million rands on the farm and he’s behind by a few months and not answering their calls. I just don’t have the energy to deal with this but I have to…you know how my father is,” she sighed.
Indeed, Samkelo knew how her father was, a stoic man who spoke little but had a dominating presence wherever he went. They had met shortly before Sethu’s mother’s funeral and, it may have been the tension of the situation at the time, but Sam was deeply intimidated by the man’s willful silence and unflinching gaze. If he didn’t want to speak or engage with anyone, he didn’t. A frustrating trait Sethu had inherited from him and a source of contention in their relationship.
Sam was upset by the sudden change of plans but he understood the urgency of the situation and had no choice but to swallow his feelings of disappointment and support his frazzled girlfriend.
“I know this was finally supposed to be our break and there’s so much we need to talk about but it will have to wait. I’ve called my sister and she knows I’ll be arriving tomor -” She could feel a hot lump forming in her throat.
Sethu’s mind raced back to three years ago when she received a call from her sister at the end of a long romantic dinner with Sam. She said their mother had to be urgently rushed to Greenacres Hospital in Port Elizabeth an hour before. It had taken a minute for her to register what she was hearing and without thinking, Sethu prepared to rush home in the middle of the night. Sam was there and insisted on going with her. She’d quickly become a wailing stuttering mess and he didn’t trust her to make the 9-hour drive alone, safely.
Just then, Sam blocked her path with an embrace, sensing that she was about to have a full-on breakdown. Sethu held on tightly to him, closing her eyes and steadying her nerves with the gentle scent of his cologne. Hot tears began rolling down her face and this reaction angered her because whatever was happening, she knew she’d need to be strong. She knew that she wasn’t.
“I know, I know,” Sam whispered, holding her tighter against him.
His intuitive acknowledgement of the fear going through her mind was comforting, but it also made her want to cry even more. There were so many things she wanted to cry about and now she had one more. She looked up at him for a moment of reassurance, then she collected herself and headed to their bedroom to prepare for her journey.
She caught her reflection in a hanging mirror, her eyes were swollen and red and her afro puff hairstyle was messed up from Sam patting her on the head when he was hugging her. She wanted to sit down and fix it but fought the urge because she knew if she did, she would start crying again and this time she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop. She hated Sam seeing her in that state because lately, he seemed to only ever see her at her most emotional and overwhelmed. She hated him being the witness and soother of her distress and she hated herself even more for needing him to be. She had nowhere else to turn.
She left Cape Town before dawn the next day. It was a long weekend so there was heavy traffic all along the N2, with couples, families and friends excitedly escaping the city to the beach, picturesque Air BnBs, and the Instagram-worthy wine estates the area was famous for. She drove through the Winelands a little after sunrise, a thick layer of smog already clung to the air below the mountains from all the cars and trucks on the road.
All along the highway, there were posters and billboards about the dreaded Day Zero, the day the taps would run dry for the 4 million inhabitants in the City of Cape Town and surrounding areas.
‘Together, let’s reduce water consumption by 30% to avoid Day Zero.‘
‘We are all responsible for water conservation.‘
‘The Cape Winelands Association welcomes you to this water-conscious area.‘
She had spent the past year reporting on the issue with municipal managers, environmental scientists and interest group leaders, speaking about how the situation got so dire and what urgently needed to be done to remedy it.
“Well, this is not a new problem, nor is it a problem we can fix on our own,” a meteorologist said in an interview.
“Could you elaborate on that sir”
“I know it’s become popular to rubbish climate science and call us alarmists for tracing everything back to fossil fuels, ecosystem destruction, and the increase of carbon emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere but that is the truth. The biggest problem is we don’t see these things as connected to the everyday challenges here on the ground and they are. A rise in global temperatures changes established weather patterns which increases the occurrence of extreme weather events like droughts, floods and wildfires. Every year, the city budgets for disaster management and we pat them on the back for their efforts but there is no structural change that takes into account that this is the future. Climate change has been projected for nearly a hundred years and it has been actively underway for at least 30 years but we still speak as if these are freak events that will pass with time. They are not, they will only continue to escalate.”
Sethu considered herself environmentally conscious—she used biodegradable materials as much as she could, drove an eco-friendly car that didn’t use a lot of petrol and made daily efforts to reduce her carbon footprint. But, looking at the facts and speaking to scientists in the know, she felt like her individual efforts were a meagre drop in the ocean of the changes that needed to happen.
She was working on a documentary about how much the brunt of climate change and inaction by governments was being passed down to citizens and consumers via more expensive food and products because of eco-friendly manufacturing processes, or so they claimed. Concepts like carbon offsets for air travel and commercial activities were used by wealthy and influential people and organisations as appeasement, under the guise of doing something, when the biggest problems are corporations and countries polluting and exploiting without any meaningful consequences.
She had watched a few documentaries around the same issues and was sure hers would also join the many that became fringe knowledge or popular for a few weeks before the discussions died down again but she resolved to do it anyway.
Her mailbox was flooded with requests from international news organisations. The New York Times, The BBC, and Al Jazeera all asking for commentary and live video feeds for their audiences on being the first major metropolitan city in the world to face this devastating possibility. Their fear-mongering headlines and condescending, ‘Look at what is happening in Africa,’ narratives irritated her but she understood that the global 24-hour news cycle had come to demand dread and disaster to keep viewers engaged.
The explanations for Day Zero ranged from a severe, unanticipated drought that turned reservoirs into dust bowls, insufficient water catchment policies and poorly maintained infrastructure due to negligence and ever-present corruption from provincial and municipal offices that needed further investigation. The dams and groundwater were running dry in smaller towns without connections to larger water infrastructure, and this was causing service delivery protests and socio-political unrest in previously peaceful communities. To curtail water wastage and manage resources, municipal rates for water went up drastically per household and this led to rental increases in an already overinflated rental market in the city and the suburbs.
“Exactly how is us paying more for water supposed to solve the problem? The city is just exploiting the situation for their own gain and we still have water outages!” an angry resident had shared.
The City of Cape Town, which famously touted its appearance on ‘Most Beautiful City In The World’ and ‘Best Tourist Destination In Africa’ lists across the world, was struggling to attract and retain tourists who had to deal with water restrictions and widespread misinformation about unsafe water quality. Hotels and other venues were suffering from a lack of national and international visitors, who were a large portion of their market revenue, and it was affecting employment numbers throughout the city. But every dark cloud has a silver lining! Private companies were stepping in and making a fortune drilling boreholes, installing filters and setting up independent water systems for businesses, institutions, and affluent households. There were rumours of deliberate sabotage and collusion for just this purpose and conspiracy theories about political parties wanting to privatise public water resources entirely. Sethu was inclined to believe a little bit of everything.
On the other side of Cape Town, poorer communities throughout the Cape Flats suffered from long stretches of intermittent water access, archaic latrine and bucket systems, and disease outbreaks that were exacerbated by extreme weather, close-quarter living and lack of proper sanitation management by the city.
The situation was declining fast! Sam had to install filters in their home and Sethu started boiling and storing her water after catching a stomach bug, even though the municipality insisted the tap water was treated properly and safe to drink. She hated having to buy water like she was away in some less developed place. She struggled with the rising cost and waste that came with constantly using bottled water. There was no more gossip at the water cooler or free coffee and tea refills as companies rationed water access to employees. An unpleasant toilet and chemical smell spread throughout the office from not flushing and using sanitation aids to conserve water. They couldn’t believe how quickly the situation went from a small worry at the back of everyone’s mind, to real and necessary changes in their daily lives.
*
In the 12 years, she had travelled up and down from Cape Town to Patensie, her favourite part was the Cape Winelands and Garden Route’s scenic beauty that inspired introspection and appreciation for nature that one could only get by travelling on the road. The drive was long, an hour-long flight to Port Elizabeth would’ve been more convenient, but she was committed to making Earth-friendly choices.
The state of her beloved route shocked her. She had never seen the land looking so dry and muted. The usually abundant bright yellow canola fields were now few and far between, the lively green vineyards were covered in tarps and sheltered in greenhouses to conserve moisture and protect them from the relentless heat. The livestock looked weary and emaciated. Sad-looking dairy cows with bones jutting out at their sides and sheep lethargically lay on discoloured pastures, chewing through dehydrated bales of hay.
She rolled down her window to buy nectarines from a roadside fruit seller but had to quickly close it because the parched soil by the roadside had been ground to fine dust and sand by the traffic so there was no fresh air to breathe. Even the breeze had been compromised.
She arrived in Patensie during the hottest part of the day. She could smell her skin singeing under the concentrated sunlight coming through the windscreen —she hadn’t worn enough sunscreen and could feel the sunburn was going to hurt later.
Sethu hadn’t been back home to the farm for 3 years, not since her mother’s burial. She kept in touch via short calls and a family WhatsApp group and, if not for the situation with the loan, she wasn’t sure she would’ve had the courage to come of her own free will. For the first time in her 30 years of living, she suddenly felt like a stranger arriving at a new but oddly familiar place, instead of a person returning home.
Patensie is a small agricultural town in the Gamtoos River Valley known for the commercial growing of citrus fruits, tobacco and vegetables. The old legend around the valley was that the babies learned how to peel a naartjie before they learned how to walk.
The word ‘Gamtoos’ came from the ancient Khoi language —the original inhabitants of the area—, meaning ‘the roaring lion’ and named so for the sound the rushing Gamtoos river made when it periodically flooded its banks, nurturing the fertile land across the valley.
But in the last seven years, the river had not flooded —the lion had lost its roar.
It broke her heart to see the scorched river beds, bridge after bridge. Previously lush forests were now dull and stripped of their fullness and the majestic Cockscomb Mountain was draped in a thin mist instead of the thick, white clouds that had always hung about its jagged crest. In the city, it was easier to become desensitised to the severity and urgency of the situation but out in the world, in the God’s country that she loved so much —the devastation was clear and quantifiable.
She called ahead to her sister, Nomazizi, who was to meet her at the main farm gate,
“Ewe, sendizofika,” Sethu said, letting her know she was almost home. Her palms suddenly feeling sweaty against the steering wheel at the thought of seeing Zizi.
As they drove in through the winding road leading to the main house, she noticed the farm looked a shabby shadow of its former self. The bright lemon orchards were now bare and barren, the ponds had run dry and wild with weeds and the animals that used to leisurely drink from them were nowhere to be seen. She felt a tightness in her chest as her sister chatted on, pointing out the drastic changes, stressing Sethu’s long absence with her tone.
“We had to dig out and burn that whole section, two years ago because of Citrus Canker disease. Then the extreme heat during the day and frost during the night damaged the remaining trees so we had to clear the entire orchard. Daddy tried planting some shrubs to help the soil recover but, in the end, they also died,” she said pointing out of the window.
“Oh, you weren’t here when they came to take the sheep and the horses, shame man. We had to demolish the big barn, Daddy said it was pointless keeping animals we couldn’t afford to feed. Did he tell you?” Zizi turned to face her.
Sethu was trying to process what she was hearing; her father would mention things being hard and changes being made around the farm but he never went into detail and honestly, she never enquired much further. That burning lump was back in her throat.
“Uh-hum—” she cleared her throat trying not to give it away.
“You know Daddy, he said he sold them off to a friend in the Free State but he didn’t say anything else.”
“Oh, is that what he told you? Did you ask him why?” Zizi asked, leaning forward towards her. The questions were loaded with the implication of deliberate disinterest on Sethu’s part and it reminded her of what she disliked the most about her sister, although four years younger than her, Zizi was sarcastic and confrontational to a fault.
The problems between the sisters had started in their teenage years when their parents decided to move Sethu from the local high school to an expensive private school in Grahamstown. Sethu was away from home most of the year while Zizi was left behind to help out with the farm. During school holidays, Sethu would be encouraged to sleep-in and rest from some of the farm work because their parents said she was an A-student who worked hard all year and needed the break. She was also an active member of sports clubs and societies which would often require her to travel away from home during school holidays.
Grahamstown was only a 2-and-a-half-hour drive away from Patensie but, even on long weekends, when other boarding school students went home, Sethu would stay behind to help out at the hostel or sleep over at local friends’ houses. Resentment began to fester as Sethu increasingly became a fleeting guest in their home while Zizi felt like Cinderella, chained to the household duties and tending to the farm work with little to no rest. She wasn’t academically gifted like her sister and the extra-curricular activities at her public school were not well-resourced so she never took an interest in sports or any societies. Then, before she knew it, Sethu had left for the University of Cape Town and had started living a life completely different from theirs.
“When did Daddy say he’d be back?” she deflected, she knew not to engage her sister’s passive-aggressive jibes or it would escalate into an all-out fight that Sethu would lose.
“He didn’t say. I don’t know why he bothers going to those community meetings anyway. They last for hours going round and round saying the same things to the same councillors who don’t give a damn about us! All that talking and nothing has changed, it’s not like it’s going to bring back the rain,” she said bitterly.
At the closing of every Sunday service over the years, the pastor had begun leading a prayer with the congregation for the drought to end. At first, it strengthened them and gave them hope—surely the Lord would hear their desperate voices? But lately, even the pastor’s piety and faith were waning and a few disgruntled congregants would make a show of leaving before his announcement for prayer. After four years of the fruitless practice, it had become an insult to their sincerity and devotion.
Every other week, the rain clouds would gather slowly over the valley, darkening and growing high into the sky, pregnant with precious rain and the locals would look up hopeful, clasping their hands together and holding their breaths. But before long, the wind would come to blow them away. On some days a little drizzle would escape, giving an hour-long reprieve to the thirsty living things below and then it would disappear as quickly as it had begun.
Sethu walked through the house and settled into her old room.
“Wow, I can’t believe everything is still the same. Even the living room still smells like mommy’s perfume.” she heard herself say out loud. Zizi blankly stared at her and she looked down, a little embarrassed realizing the weight of what she had said.
Time passed slowly and the big house suddenly felt too small for the both of them, so Sethu went outside to walk the back garden and found that it had been levelled into an empty field—the peach trees and strawberry patches she had lovingly planted in her childhood were gone.
“I had to plough this field by myself you know, remember when Uncle Smittie taught us how to drive the tractor?” Zizi mused, coming up behind her. There was a familiar warmth in her voice and Sethu smiled back at her, reliving the funny memory in her mind.
“Jirre meisie! Forward, FORWARD! Turn the wheel forward!” he had shouted from the sidelines as Zizi swerved the steering wheel in his direction —poor Uncle Smittie nearly lost a foot that day.
It had been Sethu’s tradition since her first year of full-time work to cook a feast for the family when she returned home over the Easter and Christmas holidays. She grew up diligently learning many recipes from her mother and the farm ladies, her father was not an expressive man but one thing that always made him smile with hearty appreciation was a good meal. From traditional Mfengu dishes like Umngqusho Nemifino (samp and beans with leafy green vegetables) to Cape Malay curries and Boere Potjiekos (meat and vegetable stew), he ate it all with gusto and often stated that he couldn’t trust a man that didn’t enjoy his wife’s cooking. He was a man of simple tastes and she knew she would need to soften him up before she attempted to get the full story of what was happening with the loan and the farm out of him.
“Does daddy know I’m here about the loan? That the people called me yesterday?”
“I’m sure he’ll pretend that he doesn’t know, but I told him you were coming after you called yesterday and he didn’t ask me why, so I think he knows,” Zizi responded.
The pantry cupboards were almost empty so she decided to escape into town to buy groceries for her feast before it got too late. She thought of inviting her sister along but decided she needed the time alone to catch up to her emotions about being home again after so long and under such stressful circumstances. Sethu had been dealing with a lot of work stress and health issues in recent months and wasn’t in her usual resilient shape, she knew she would need all her strength and patience to get through the tough conversations ahead.
While driving to the shops, she was flooded with pleasant memories of her excitement on weekend excursions into town with her mother, to the old Post Office where she opened her first savings bank account at 15 and then having lunch at Auntie Anna’s farm stall and cafe that made the best marmalade jam, she had ever tasted. But like the farm, they had lost their former shine —the letters on the signage of the post office were peeling off or completely faded in places and the wooden patio of the cafe looked dusty and dilapidated.
She was greeted enthusiastically by Auntie Merle who recognized her immediately upon her entry into the small local supermarket.
“Nooo man, that can’t be my baby, Siphosethu!” she shouted and came out from behind the cash till to give her a warm hug.
“Oh my skat, my baby I can’t believe you are so big! A big big girlie now!”, she cooed cupping Sethu’s cheeks in her bejewelled hands that still smelt like her signature magnolia lotion—she made it herself from the flowers in her garden and swore it was the secret to her youthful looks even though she was well into her 70s. Sethu sheepishly filled her in on how her life was going in the big city of Cape Town. Auntie Merle’s beaming face, when listening to her minor accomplishments, was reassuring and made her feel acknowledged in a way she hadn’t felt for years since her mother’s passing. No one in her competitive professional circles and personal friend groups had ever genuinely asked how she was doing, though she had to admit she wouldn’t have been honest with them even if they had. At that moment, she realised how deeply she had missed being the subject of someone’s undivided attention and adoration.
“Enough about me, Auntie, how are you? Everything is so different now; I can’t believe this is the same town I last saw a few years ago.”
Auntie Merle let out a long sigh, then leaned back and rested against the counter.
“Ey my kind, as you can see things are not going well,” she gestured to the half-empty shelves in the empty shop. She was working alone at the front with another young lady Sethu didn’t recognise manning the bakery and butchery at the back of the supermarket.
“I know there’s been a drought but what is happening to the town?”
“Well, you know we haven’t had good rains in years and the commercial farmers have been really suffering. The harvests got smaller and smaller until there wasn’t any at all. You know this supermarket used to supply the BnBs and restaurants in the area, but the farms have nothing to sell to me so I have no way of supplying them either. The river and the big Kouga Dam are almost run dry so the tourists aren’t coming here since it was declared a disaster area and there are no activities for them to do here anymore. Don’t even get me started on those crooks at the municipality who stole the money to help us maintain the businesses and jobs around here!” she scoffed angrily.
“You saw the empty shops and the places that closed down —the young people have left town to find work in other provinces and cities, it’s just us oldies left now. I miss the harvest season and the festivals—the way we used to all get together and get the work done but now everyone is locked up in their houses trying to save face from their neighbours. Argh, I really hate this god-forsaken drought! I tell you, some days I wake up and I can’t be bothered!” she moaned defeatedly, shaking her head. Auntie Merle was never the type to be less than a sparkling ray of sunshine but even in her bright floral dress and freshly permed hair, Sethu could tell the situation had taken quite a toll on her.
Even though the supermarket wasn’t doing well, Auntie Merle insisted on giving her the best preserves and cuts of meat for free. She kept saying how happy she was to see Sethu back in town and how glad she was that Sethu was there to see her father.
“You mos know jou Pa is a hard man When Elnora passed away, he carried on because he had to but he hasn’t been the same ever since and he would never say it but he has missed you terribly.” Her words rang in Sethu’s mind as she packed the groceries into the car. She broke down in a sobbing heap while waiting at a stop sign on the way back. Everything was just too much. She could handle her own personal matters, but to be confronted with the bigger issues that she couldn’t comprehend or control made her feel so powerless and helpless.
She arrived home just as it was getting dark and saw the stout but curved silhouette of her father’s body in the shadow of the headlights as she parked the car in the driveway. He now walked steadily with a wooden cane in his right hand. Her father’s hands were too big and too thick for a computer keyboard or the narrow screen of a smartphone — proud farmer’s hands, calloused on the inside and crooked on the outside. Growing hands that knew when and how to fertilise the soil for a juicy lemon with too much sweetness for tea but just the right tang for lemonade. Sethu had learned everything she knew about life from watching him grow almost every fruit and vegetable they had ever eaten on that hard-won plot of farmland that he was so proud to call his own. A Grootboom with a green thumb that seemed to hold the secrets of the entire universe in them. He was a strong and righteous man who always did his best and didn’t wallow for too long when he couldn’t, she could feel tears brimming in her eyes as she looked at him, now much shorter and thinner than he had ever been.
“Ntomb’enhle, ukhona!” (Beautiful girl, you are here).
He greeted her with a half-hearted side hug but held her warm hands a few seconds longer, while he looked affectionately at her with his greying eyes. She got to work quickly in the kitchen. Zizi gleefully announced she wouldn’t be helping in any way because she wanted to see what the lady from Cape Town would cook for them.
“Today, I’m going to enjoy the Siphosethu Grootboom catering service!” she quipped.
For a moment, the house was alive with laughter and lively voices again and as if, they all had the same thought at the same time, they went quiet thinking about their mother who used to have the loudest laugh of them all. Elnora Thembisa Grootboom was a stocky woman with legs as thick as tree trunks and broad shoulders, but a soft bosom that was always ready to pull you in for an embrace.
They had found out too late that she had a rare form of Uterine Cancer and that there had been a spate of similar cases across the province in farming communities. There was speculation it was linked to the use of agricultural pesticides in the 80s and 90s but it was yet to be confirmed. A man from the Department of Labour encouraged her family to join a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers but her father declined his attempts, saying what did it matter in the end and that his wife was already dead and all the fuss wouldn’t bring her back.
After the high praise and merriment from her delicious meal, Sethu was tired and decided it would be better to leave the conversation with her father for the next day.
She had messaged Sam to tell him she arrived safely and saw his missed call while she was cooking, so she called him back.
“How is everyone?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“Everyone is as well as can be expected but the farm, oh my god Sam! Things are way worse than I imagined! The whole valley is basically in ruins. The drought has destroyed everything on this side.”
“Yoh, it’s been in the news that the drought has been going on much longer in the Eastern Cape so I can only imagine,” Sam sighed heavily.
“Have you asked your father about the loan yet?”
“Not yet. The right moment hasn’t come up and honestly, I’m scared to find out what he’s going to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“Now that I’ve seen everything with my own eyes, I know it can only be bad news. I just don’t understand why he would let me find out from some loan person over the phone and not tell me himself,” Sam could hear the hurt in her voice.
“Speaking of that man on the phone, I looked through the email you forwarded me from AgriBiz and these guys are no joke.”
“What do you mean? I haven’t had the chance to look through everything properly. Who are they?” she asked, now curious about Sam’s worried tone.
“They are a multinational Agricultural industry giant. They do everything from financing, property management, insurance and equipment hiring to product manufacturing. I read an article about them buying up farms and agricultural businesses in Zimbabwe.”
“Okay, that isn’t odd, is it?”.
“Not on its own, but they are dealing with a few legal challenges to their fast-spreading monopoly and the latest stories doing the rounds about them are concerning,” he replied.
“There are accusations of poisoning irrigation systems to kill crops in Limpopo and there’s a story that they’ve been bribing land appraisers and administrators in Mpumalanga to get reduced prices for land and farms from unwitting buyers and sellers. I’ve asked someone to find me one of their loan agreements. You need to read through the one your father signed because apparently, they are charging extortionate interest rates and attaching assets in the event of lenders not being able to keep up with payments.”
“What! That sounds crazy and how have I never heard of them?” she asked.
“They don’t really advertise outside of their niche market and they allegedly pay big money to media companies to squash stories that come out against them. It also looks like the executives have big political connections on their side, so everyone is scared to go after them.”
Sam had been researching and following discussion board rabbit holes about AgriBiz that whole day and his journalistic instincts told him that this was a huge story.
“Sethu, you need to find that loan agreement and figure out what these people want.”
She had only ever heard him use that serious tone when he was working on a story. There was clearly something much bigger going on. They wrapped up their conversation with Sam reassuring her that he would follow up on what they could do about the situation and for her not to worry if she needed to stay in Patensie a bit longer. Sethu couldn’t believe what he had told her and wondered how the hell her father had gotten mixed up with such a dubious company.
*
The next morning, their father was out of the house early, visiting a friend over on the next farm. Zizi told Sethu the man had fallen into drinking after he was laid off by his company because of the drought and shortly after his wife left him and took their small children back to the North West province with her.
“Uncle Sallie man, you know him, he was always wearing that maroon jersey and used to come buy Mommy’s lemon brandy every Christmas,” she said. The name didn’t ring a bell to Sethu. Zizi had always been better at keeping up with the people and the happenings in the valley community. Upon his return, her father called for Sethu to come sit with him in his office behind the kitchen, where Zizi was busy preparing lunch and keeping an ear on their conversation.
Sethu marvelled again at how much smaller her father had become while he sat reclining on an old leather couch by the window. The wrinkles and skin tags on his beautiful, brown face looked somehow distinguished, the portrait of a man who had earned his lashings from the elements in an honest way.
“I’m not going to beat about the bush,” he started.
“By now, I expect you know about the loan from AgriBiz and what that means,” he looked directly at her as if expecting a response.
“Yes, I know, Daddy,” she nodded back at him. He shifted his position on the couch looking a bit uncomfortable.
“Well, you know the drought has been going on for seven years now. At first, things were manageable, there were a lot of water reserves in the valley and the Kouga dam was mostly at capacity all the years before. But the heat kept on rising without subsiding and the fields and orchards were losing moisture much faster than they ever had, so before long even those reserves were running low.”
“Okay,” she listened attentively, observing the subtle strain on her father’s face as he spoke.
“After everything was settled with your Ma’s passing, I used some of the money from the life insurance and the Department of Agriculture pay-outs to get a smart irrigation system and fertilisers to protect the crops. That helped us along for a year or so but with not enough rainfall and drying up water sources it only lasted so long,” he said, wiping his perspiring face with a worn handkerchief that was tucked into his jacket pocket.
Unlike Boere Afrikaans farmers and farms owned by big conglomerates that had larger private water resources, their farm still relied on communal resources because of apartheid legacy policies that structurally disadvantaged their land ownership conditions and by extension, their farms’ commercial capabilities. They also discovered that some of the farmers were receiving more favourable rates for their harvests and were allowed more concessions regarding crop exports and industrial contracts. Tensions over these racial, economic and resource disparities had bubbled over in the valley and as a result, some long-standing community corporations and business unions fell apart.
That’s when her father heard about AgriBiz. Initially, he was just curious about what they were offering. The farm had been fully paid off and he was up to date on the land maintenance fees so he had the option of borrowing with partial ownership as collateral because the income from the commercial farming side had completely stopped. He made various attempts to repurpose the land for hardier crops but even the soil refused new seedlings—it craved the lemons that it loved and rather chose death than a new, unfamiliar life.
“But Daddy, why didn’t you tell me all of this?” Sethu asked, holding back tears. Her father looked away at the big bay window beside him for a moment.
“You think you know everything. I’ve been a farmer longer than you’ve been alive, what were you gonna do about it? I’ve worked on this land for over 70 years. First, with my father and brothers and then with your mother. The seasons change, harvests go up and down but I have NEVER seen a drought like this! Every year, there has been a new problem I can’t solve so what were YOU gonna do? Huh!” he shouted, annoyed at her.
So, in the end, when things were not improving on all fronts, he grudgingly took the mortgage loan against the previously paid-off property, thinking that after five years, surely something would have changed and he would recover it over time. However, agricultural reports projected a prolonged drought with even worsening conditions due to climate change and, all the while, the high interest on the loan kept piling up month after month.
He had nearly wept the day he had to let the last of the farm workers go. He had used some of the loan repayment money and his personal savings to give them proper severance packages.
These were people her father had known and worked intimately alongside for decades —he had dined with their families, watched their children grow up alongside his own and worshipped with them in churches and town halls, all his life. He knew the situation was beyond him but he couldn’t help feeling the crushing failure and devastation as if it was of his own making. He grieved for his dying land the same way he grieved for his beloved, his hands craved the soil, the feel of it moist and sandy between his fingers, the smell of it moving through his senses that he could almost taste it. He had suffered too many losses in recent years and it weighed on him in a way it never had before, he was tired and couldn’t see the point of it all anymore.
Zizi had been listening in on their conversation while waiting on the dough for the bread she was making to rise. She knew bits and pieces about the situation but was also hearing the story for the first time in her father’s own words, about what had happened and what he was going to do about it.
Their father got up, walked over to open a drawer in his big desk and pulled out two big envelopes, one with the AgriBiz agreements and the other, with his living will and the title deeds to the farm properties.
“Nomazizi! Vela!” he called to her.
Zizi immediately went in, surprised to be included in the conversation and worried at the way her father looked mournfully at her standing in the doorway, wearing her late mother’s favourite apron.
“Mamelani, bantwana bam” (Listen up, my children) he started.
He explained that he was fully aware of the agreement and what it meant when he had signed the documents.
“I may only have basic schooling and been a farmer all my life but I’m no village fool,” he said sternly, his eyes finding Sethu’s as he made the assertion. His body may have been declining but his mind was still as sharp as ever. He told them that at most, AgriBiz could claim 30% ownership of the farm which was the agreed-upon percentage if he were to default on the mortgage loan. He pulled out documents from the second envelope and explained that he had transferred all of his remaining property ownership evenly between them.
35% for Siphosethu Grootboom and 35% for Nomazizi Grootboom.
Sethu took the documents from him and saw their names printed in red ink with the official national coat of arms seal stamped over them. Zizi couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“What! What does that mean?” she asked, confused and a little excited to see her name written on an official title deed.
Sethu stood up and looked over at her father. Ever since the call with the AgriBiz consultant, and the whole drive up to Patensie, she had wondered what he was thinking and what his plan was. Never in a million years had she thought that this was what he would do. She had never seen her father look so defeated but also oddly, at peace. He stated that he would answer no further questions on the matter, nor would he entertain any debates about his decision. He then went to lie down in his room and asked Zizi to bring him his lunch in bed when it was ready.
“So, does this mean the farm is ours now?” Zizi turned to her sister.
“Yes, it does. Yours, mine and AgriBiz,” she replied bitterly.
When their mother passed, she had left everything in her will to their father. She had stated that it was for safekeeping as both her daughters were unmarried and had no children. Zizi had been a little disappointed because she had hoped to have some money of her own, outside of the salary she got from working on the farm and part-timing at the community co-operative. She had been secretly saving up for years so she could apply for a Business Administration qualification. She had been helping her father with some of the books for the farm business for years and she knew how to manage organisations from her experience at the Co-op. She had grown up watching her parents farm and manage various businesses and she wanted to learn more about that. She had done well in Business Economics in high school but not well enough in Maths and Accounting to comfortably apply for a Bachelor of Commerce qualification. Other matriculants from her year had done bridging courses to improve particular subjects that they needed to qualify and her mother had suggested she do the same but Zizi had been tired of school and learning and had wanted to take a break for a while. She had gotten lucky and, for four years after high school, she had worked a good job with the local tourism board, doing hiking tours with groups of tourists and also helping out as a server at a game lodge that had a lot of international tourists who tipped well.
That’s where she had met her on-and-off boyfriend who was older and worked as an engineer at the Volkswagen offices in Uitenhage. Sometimes, when it wasn’t busy at the lodge and the farm, she would sneak off to see him over the weekend, telling her parents that she was there visiting old high school friends. Her father didn’t pay much attention to her movements. In his mind, she was a grown woman and he had never known her to be foolish or overtly interested in men. Even around the valley, Zizi had a reputation for having a snooty attitude and a smart mouth which seemed to keep many young men at bay and her father much preferred it that way.
One night, her mother had caught her rummaging through the fridge and had scolded her.
“Nomazizi! Are you pregnant? Why are you eating in the middle of the night? Oh, dear lord what has this child done!” she had begun to wail when Zizi stopped her.
“Haybo Mama! Calm down, I’m not pregnant. I’m just hungry, don’t wake Daddy up or he’ll be grumpy the whole day tomorrow,” she had laughed.
“You think I don’t know about that man in Uitenhage! Auntie Merle saw you with a man at some shopping centre a few months ago. You’re always looking and giggling at your phone before you go ‘visit’ your so-called friends in P.E.” she had added, grabbing her by the arm.
“Mommy please!” Zizi had replied in shock. She had been embarrassed to find out that her mother knew about what she thought she was keeping so skillfully secret.
The following day, her mother made Zizi confess everything about how she had met her boyfriend, who he was, where he worked, and whether he was a good man. Zizi had reluctantly answered all of her questions knowing that refusal was not an option or her mother would tell her father who was apparently unaware.
After their family meeting and a quiet lunch in their respective bedrooms to process everything that had happened, Sethu went for a long walk around the property —taking in all her favourite spots and remembering how they used to be.
She had made a lot of visits to climate disaster-affected farms and community pastures for her work, she remembered the faces of the distressed owners who lamented their losses and how heart-breaking it was to see their land go to waste. If it wasn’t a drought, it was wildfires, soil degradation, or swarms of locusts destroying entire harvests overnight.
One man said it felt like the Earth was angry at them, like the plagues of Egypt in the Bible. Looking out at the arid farmland she couldn’t recognise from the Eden she had left behind. Sethu wiped the tears pooling in her tired eyes. The farm had become another piece of her that might never recover.
Later that night, Zizi read through all the documents, occasionally Googling the meanings and explanations of terms she couldn’t understand and jotting down in a notebook the parts she wanted further advice on. She had excitedly relayed the news to her boyfriend and asked for his assistance in matters going forward. She could’ve gone to Sethu for help but her pride wouldn’t allow her to ask directly, lest she seem to know less than her sister.
Sethu woke up late on Monday morning and instinctively checked her email inbox, where she found new emails from Sam. He had done a lot of digging and found a few cases that concerned their loan situation with AgriBiz. She read through the emails and her heart dropped when she came upon a court summary of a case involving a divorced couple that had defaulted against their loan agreement and lost partial ownership of their vineyard to AgriBiz. It was noted, in an accompanying article, that AgriBiz then approached the husband and wife separately, sowing division and making exorbitant offers to them to sell their respective shares in the property to AgriBiz, which would then make their company the majority owner of the vineyard. It occurred to Sethu that she and Zizi hadn’t discussed the new joint ownership situation and that they would definitely need to have a strong consensus on what to do because there was now a third party, AgriBiz, inextricably entangled in what was a family matter.
Zizi had dreams of finally leaving Patensie and moving to Port Elizabeth with a girl she knew from the co-op, who rented a room in a communal house and worked at a small micro-lending office.
“I want to live by the beach, you know. I want to drive fast through the city and see different people every day. All my life, I’ve been a farmer’s daughter and I just want to be someone different,” she had told the girl.
She had been ready to apply to a business college there when her mother suddenly got sick and then passed away shortly after. Her hopes had been dashed but she was too mired in grief to care so she had had to put the idea out of her mind for years. She couldn’t leave her father alone in the state he was in, especially as the farm was also crumbling around them. However, with the decision that her father had made and insisted they respect, she suddenly remembered her plans from years ago and woke up early that Monday morning to head into town and make arrangements to travel as soon as she could.
Sethu had said she was staying for the rest of the week and would be visiting the AgriBiz offices in Port Elizabeth soon, so Zizi didn’t have to worry about their father. She felt a smug sense of satisfaction that it would be her sister who’d be stuck figuring things out in Patensie and not her for once. She didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about the situation but she could tell that Sethu did, their father was old and they were going to inherit the farm eventually anyway. In Zizi’s mind, she had earned her stake in the property with blood, sweat and tears in a way that Sethu hadn’t because her life has always being built somewhere far away from the farm. She was in the queue to book a bus ticket when her cell phone rang and it was her sister calling. She debated for a moment on whether to answer it and was about to when she got called up to the counter by the cashier.
“And where are you booking your ticket to ma’am?” the lady asked, Zizi paused for a moment to think about the question while Sethu’s call continued vibrating in her pocket.
At that moment, their father was sitting up in his bed with the curtains still drawn and the bedside lamp on, looking through an old photo album of pictures of him and his wife when they were young before their children were born. He loved the way his wife squinted against the sun when she smiled in their wedding photos. The day had been a modest affair by the old lake at the municipal park, officiated by her uncle who was a respected bishop from Mthatha and she had been the most beautiful bride he had ever seen.
He turned another page and an old, yellowed piece of paper fell out. He turned it over in his hands and recognised his wife’s beautiful cursive handwriting in fading blue ink. Ah, it was her famous lemonade recipe that she had never shared with anybody, not even him.
Nora’s Homemade Lemonade
– Fresh lemons, as many as you can find!
– White granulated cane sugar and distilled water to make a simple syrup.
– Water. Amount depends on how sweet or sour you want to make your lemonade.
*Nora’s special ingredient (3 hearts)
It was just like Elnora to be whimsical and vague even in her own recipe, he smiled to himself thinking of her cheerful and childlike nature. She brought light into every room she entered and it balanced out the dark cloud he carried with him wherever he went. Now his sun was gone and it was a perpetual night.
He read the recipe over and over again, sniffing the lemon-scented paper and running his fingers over the written words. People would come from far and wide to buy Auntie Nora’s famous lemonade, it always sold out fast at the farm stalls and festivals.
Many of her friends begged her to tell them the secret recipe and what else she was putting into such a simple drink to make it taste so amazing but his wife would always laugh mischievously and say, “That’s for me to know and you to never find out!”
He thought about their biggest harvest season when she had made it, especially for him for the first time. That year, the yield had been extraordinary. The soil had been rich and healthy. The rains had been more than enough and the sunshine lovingly watched over everything until it was ready to be pulled from the ground. He had worked long, gruelling days, and nights in the fields and orchards, making sure every bit of juicy fruit and vegetable was harvested and packed away correctly.
He sniffed the paper again and thought he picked up the scent of her perfume. So, he sniffed it again and again until he broke down into tears. His crying was quiet at first and then turned into sorrowful whimpering, his tears ran down onto the piece of paper – smudging and blurring the writing into an illegible mess.
Why was his land dying when he had promised to leave it to his grandchildren? What was all that back-breaking work for when now he was all alone, left with nothing?
“Why did you leave me, when we promised to go together?” he sobbed out loud.
He looked down to see the recipe falling apart in his hands. Life had given them too many lemons and there was no water for lemonade.