24/07/2026
From Crisis Response to the Commons of Care: Building a Commons Economy from the Ground Up
Reflections from the Food Indaba: Water, Food and the Coming Crisis: Lessons from Day Zero and Pathways to Resilience
For generations, women have carried the invisible infrastructure of our communities. We have stretched meals when there was not enough food. We have cared for children, older persons, neighbours and the sick. We have organised feeding schemes, planted gardens, supported families through hardship and held communities together during moments of crisis.
Yet this labour is rarely recognised as work.
It is often called volunteering. It is often called kindness. It is often expected as a natural responsibility of women.
But care is work.
Care creates social value. Care creates economic value. Care sustains life itself.
The Food Indaba reminded us that food, water, health and dignity are deeply connected. The crises of Day Zero and COVID-19 revealed the same truth: when systems are under pressure, communities organise. Communities do not simply wait for solutions. Communities create solutions.
During the Level 5 lockdown, the Bonteheuwel Development Forum (BDF) experienced this reality first-hand. We mobilised community networks, supported feeding schemes, shared information, assisted vulnerable households, supported youth programmes and expanded our gardens.
The state had statistics.
Communities had relationships.
We knew who had lost income. We knew who was hungry. We knew who needed support. We knew because we live among one another.
During this period, I personally experienced the impact of rising food prices while purchasing weekly provisions for 37 feeding schemes. For many households, rising prices were not just economic indicators. They determined whether a family could eat, whether a feeding scheme could continue and how far limited resources could stretch.
The Competition Commission's investigations into food markets have raised important questions about concentration, pricing and fairness within our food system. Hunger is not only about the availability of food. It is also about access, affordability and the power relationships that shape our food economy.
But food security cannot be achieved through food parcels alone.
We must move towards food sovereignty.
In Bonteheuwel, our community gardens and food forests showed that working-class communities are not only consumers. We are producers, innovators and custodians of knowledge.
We planted because we needed to survive.
We planted because food prices were becoming unbearable.
We planted because growing food is also an act of reclaiming dignity.
However, we must acknowledge the realities we face. The Cape Flats does not naturally provide easy agricultural conditions. Our soils require investment, composting, soil rehabilitation, water access and technical support. Community gardens cannot survive on commitment alone.
During our journey, we experienced the challenge of having no boreholes, no JoJo tanks and no adequate rainwater harvesting systems. Our children volunteering in the gardens carried two-litre bottles of water from home and brought organic waste for composting.
Their commitment was inspiring.
But it also raises a difficult question:
Why should children carry water to sustain community food systems when society has the resources and knowledge to invest in proper infrastructure?
This brings us to the question we must ask:
Who controls our water?
Water is not separate from food. Water is life.
Land without water cannot sustain life. As we continue the struggle for land justice, we must also secure democratic stewardship of our water resources.
Food sovereignty requires water sovereignty.
It requires communities having a meaningful voice in decisions about the resources that sustain life.
But building resilient food systems cannot become the responsibility of communities alone.
We need a new social compact between the state, communities, producers, retailers, universities and civil society.
Government has constitutional responsibilities to promote social and economic development, ensure access to basic rights and create conditions where people can live with dignity.
Universities and researchers must work with communities as partners in producing knowledge, recognising that lived experience is also expertise.
Agricultural departments must support urban agriculture through training, extension services, soil improvement, innovation and appropriate technologies such as hydroponics and aeroponics.
Producers and retailers must recognise their responsibility in creating a fairer food system where nutritious food is accessible and affordable.
Civil society organisations must be recognised for the vital role they play in strengthening democracy and community resilience.
This is why we must move beyond traditional Public-Private Partnerships towards Public-Private-Community Partnerships.
Communities are not passive beneficiaries.
We are partners.
We are knowledge holders.
We are builders of solutions.
This is where the idea of a Commons Economy becomes important.
A Commons Economy asks a different question.
Instead of asking only how much profit can be extracted, it asks:
How do we organise our shared resources to sustain life?
A Commons Economy recognises:
• Food as a right, not a commodity.
• Water as a shared resource requiring democratic stewardship.
• Care as essential infrastructure.
• Community gardens as economic and social assets.
• Waste pickers as environmental workers.
• Artisans as builders of local resilience.
• Community kitchens and bakeries as local economic hubs.
• Women's labour as productive work deserving recognition and fair remuneration.
This connects directly to Local Economic Development.
Our communities already have skills and capabilities.
We have artisans.
We have bakers.
We have gardeners.
We have waste pickers.
We have environmental workers.
We have young people with energy and creativity.
The question is whether our economic systems are designed to recognise and invest in these strengths.
Instead of creating endless cycles of temporary work and dependence, we need dignified employment, local procurement, insourcing where appropriate and community enterprises that allow wealth to circulate within neighbourhoods.
The future of our communities cannot be built through government alone.
It cannot be built through markets alone
It must be built through collective responsibility.
The Commons of Care is not an idea waiting to be created.
It already exists in our communities.
It exists in the hands of women who feed families.
It exists in the gardens we nurture.
It exists in the neighbours who share water.
It exists in the volunteers who step forward in times of crisis.
It exists in the young people who believe another future is possible.
Our challenge is to recognise it, resource it and place it at the centre of our development.
Because the true measure of an economy is not how much wealth it accumulates.
The true measure of an economy is whether it sustains life.
Care is not charity.
Care is work.
Care is power.
Care is the foundation of a just, democratic and humane society.
Bonteheuwel Development Forum
Building resilient communities through solidarity, dignity and collective action.
