By: Anna Majavu
A former bus driver who lost most of her sight after being attacked in a home invasion has bounced back to win an award as a woman farmer entrepreneur. Kholisa Dabula, 41, beat 11 other female farmers in the OR Tambo District Municipality in the Eastern Cape to win the Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform’s Women Entrepreneur Award on 25 June.
The R15,000 award is given to small-scale women farmers who make strides in entrepreneurship. Dabula was living in Cape Town in 2020 when a group of criminals broke into her house, assaulted her and her whole family, and doused her eyes with chemicals. She lost all her sight in her left eye and most of her sight in her right eye. She could no longer work at her job of 11 years – driving buses – or afford to stay in Cape Town.
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After heading back home to live with her mother in Mdlandlovu village near Qumbu in the Eastern Cape, Dabula began planting spinach at home to keep her busy. Once she started to sell the spinach, Dabula told Vutivi News she realised she could make a new career as a farmer. She asked her local chief for two hectares of land and planted spinach and cabbage which she sold to villagers, informal traders and schools.
Dabula also gives away her produce for free to anyone in the village holding a traditional event. “It was very difficult when I started because I had no money at all. I was planting that small spinach and sold it around and used the money to cultivate the bigger piece of land,” she said. Dabula said that the Mhlontlo Municipality’s agricultural staff had been immense support, and the R15,000 prize money would go far. “I will be planting another hectare because I didn’t have money to plant it before. I will also buy 100 broiler chickens and once I sell them, I will buy egg layers.”
Her plan is to become a commercial farmer as soon as possible, sell her vegetables to major supermarket chains and then create jobs for other people living with disabilities on her farm. “Every person who is living with a disability must not feel down and ashamed of themselves. It is vital that they wake up and do farming and stop hiding in shame,” she said. Dabula added that farming was a full-time job.
She fortunately has access to clean river water but without any prior government funding, she has not been able to buy an irrigation system and waters her vegetables with buckets of water that she carries from the river. “My major problem is that I have more land that I can plant but I don’t have tractors, fertilisers or other equipment. If I could get a sprinkler system to water my crops, I would go very far,” she said.
