People who I take to visit Strandfontein always have the same reaction when I show them the ‘Hyacinth Pans’: wide eyes with the question, ‘How are you going to clear it?’ to which I answer ‘ there are plans, but no money or people to execute it.’ I did, however, have one exception to this, namely Mrs Hillary Joseph from the City of Cape Town’s Economic Social Development and Tourism Department (ESD&T). Her reaction when she saw the water hyacinth was one of pure excitement! This is because she was looking to start a project to train and employ people from local underprivileged communities to remove, process and make furniture from hyacinth that could then be sold at designer prices on the international market. Given the abundance of water hyacinth at Strandfontein, the site naturally lends itself to such a project and it was therefore decided that this will be the host site for the pilot phase in conjunction with the rest of the False Bay Ecology Park (FBEP).
The Department of Environmental Affairs: National Resource Management Program (DEA: NRMP) has given R1,462,002.00 to fund the pilot project for one year. This will enable us to employ a team of 30 unemployed and unskilled people to start clearing water hyacinth from S3. If at the end of the one year period there is no more hyacinth left at Strandfontein, the project can move on to another water hyacinth infected site and continue the pilot project there.
The purpose of this pilot is to evaluate whether there is an international market for the type of furniture that will be made. As water hyacinth is a plant we are already trying to eradicate it is the perfect candidate for the project. It will be used in a completely unsustainable way so once it has all gone, and if the project is a success, we will then be able to look to another resource that can be used in a sustainable way.
The team of 30 people will be run as a Skills Development Team. This is a project whereby unskilled people are employed from the local community and given work, as well as training in certain skills: Nature conservation awareness, alien clearing, chainsaw and brush cutter competency, basic fire fighting, learners licence for code 10 and motor bike (possibly drivers licences if time permits), first aid level 1 and level 3, snake handling, water safety and processing the water hyacinth to remove the fibre for the rope. This type of skills-development oriented project has already been successfully run until recently in other contexts across the FBEP.
The duration of the project is aimed to be about one year. This means that at the end of the one year period the project will have taken 30 unemployed, unskilled people and given them a chance to better their circumstances by giving them the skills to find meaningful employment.
By Victoria Elizabeth Day
Reserve Manager
Strandfontein Birding Area
False Bay Ecology Park
Good luck on this! Water Hyacinth rarely stays cleared. It is feloniously renewable. It lays down a seed bank that can last more than 50 years. Profitable use is the key to maintaining the long term effort necessary to keep it cleared. Consider also its use for biofuel. It can be digested into methane fuel gas or compressed into biomass briquettes that can be burned in the new low pollution stoves that produce charcoal as a byproduct.(See it done in Bungoma, Kenya.) Publish your process and results. I’ll be looking for them.
Interesting, we have completely cleared it from Zeekoevlei, every plant removed by hand, I didn’t know about the 50 year seed bank thing.
To date the last plants removed was believed to be from seed and not asexual reproduction. However this was 10 months ago with no plants found since. We are still monitoring none the less as we do not want to loss any ground to this invader. We are currently in maintance phase and are two to three years off of claiming eradication from Zeekoevlei and its rivers.
Who can I get hold of if I was interested in buying a large amount of rope that is made from water hyacinth?