Limpopo’s botanical garden to create about 200 temporary jobs

Thunder, rain and mud did not stop the launch of the Thohoyandou National Botanical Garden in Limpopo, on Sunday.

Technically, a relaunch after the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment took it over after the facilities in the Vhembe district fell into disrepair, the park joins 10 other parks in eight other provinces.

The North West is now the only province without a botanical garden.

“The National Botanical Gardens Expansion Strategy aims to firstly, establish at least one botanical garden in each province; secondly to ensure that all biomes are represented in the establishment of new botanical gardens and lastly to expand existing national botanical gardens as we have recently done for the Harold Porter National Botanical Garden in the Western Cape,” Minister Barbara Creecy said yesterday.

“Here in Thohoyandou at least 200 temporary job opportunities will be created through the establishment of this Botanical Garden with R20 million being secured from the department’s environmental programmes and R20 million from the national department of tourism for garden development and tourism destination promotion.”

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Except, and no fault of the department, 200 temporary jobs will never fill a province’s pockets. A largely rural area, according to Stats SA first quarter of 2022, “compared to fourth quarter of 2020, the largest decreases in employment were recorded in Mpumalanga and Limpopo (down by 96 000 each)” and reported 52.8% unemployment under the expanded definition.

This means those who were unemployed and had stopped looking for work. And the pressure for jobs came crashing down on Creecy’s shoulders as speaker after speaker implored her to use local labour and, local government.

Thulamela acting mayor SC Kwinda said the programme “will increase tourism” in Thulamela, the Vhembe District and in Limpopo as a whole.

“This programme will fight poverty and unemployment in our area,” said Kwinda It’s a tall order for the provincial leadership, and the Limpopo MEC for economic development, environment and tourism Thabo Mokone took note of.

“I saw something which ourselves as government have neglected,” he said.

“There were people around here, you could see there was no order. The toilets had water all over them, and I asked myself, ‘what kind of human beings are we?’ We find things in order, and we destroy them.”

“As the ANC government, we have to acknowledge where we make mistakes.”

Mokone was also expecting tourism to have a major impact on the province, especially with collaboration between local universities, as the SA National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) stepped up its role in the area.

Creecy noted earlier the garden was “a biodiversity centre for the province showcasing traditional botanical garden infrastructure, the role of indigenous knowledge and practices in conservation and biodiversity research facilities, which will be of benefit to the province”.

The garden’s revamp will bring a little jewel to life in the far north of South Africa.

The garden falls under the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve, within the Vhembe district municipality and Thulamela local municipality and according to department, includes a representative portion of the Soutpansberg Mountain Bushveld – a vulnerable vegetation type with only 2.2% under protection.

Part of the new managements’ role will be to head into the mountains to find specimens and add them to the more than 82 hectares of the garden, initially established in 1976 as a herbarium.

 “This land, now included under the conservation estate of the country, was part of a land claim lodged by the Mphaphuli and Tshiluvhi communities, who were forcefully removed from their land in the past,” Creecy said.

While Sanbi has be running the park since 2016, it was in 2020 government decided to take it under its wing.

 “We, as government, want to continue to grant access to your community to visit ancestral graves located within these gardens, in a more dignified and structured manner,” said Creecy.

“This will be agreed to between Sanbi and the communities.”

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