Johannesburg - Poverty can be brutal and put unimaginable pressure on an individual. This was the situation for a woman from the poverty-stricken village of Hamburg in the Eastern Cape. To put food on the table, Nozeti Makhubalo, 57, turned to a life of crime.
Makhubalo found herself poaching abalone to support and care for her family more than two decades ago. Makhubalo and many other women from disadvantaged backgrounds in the village risked their lives so their families would not starve.
They joined the abalone-poaching industry despite its risks. The industry in South Africa is said to be a lucrative yet dangerous black market business. In 2018, the sector was listed as the country’s third-largest fishery business.
The abalone-poaching business is allegedly controlled by faceless gangs in coastal areas such as the Eastern and Western Cape. Makhubalo was saved from the clutches of poaching life by the Keiskamma Art Project, established in 2000.
The project was set up to create significant textile artworks that contribute to preserving oral history and archiving the collective memory of the province’s rural people. During her poaching days, Makhubalo was always on high alert to evade the police. She did this for 12 straight years.
Makhubalo said they sold the poached abalone for R45 per kilogram, and she would have sold at least 10kg on days that business was booming.
She said it took her less than a minute to get one abalone from its shell.
According to Makhubalo, the group she was poaching with sold some of the abalones to the coastal area residents and other poachers, but only one person would collect the abalone and take it to prospective buyers.
“We did not know who the buyers were. The transactions would always be done at night, and we did not see their face. We did not care who they were. We just wanted to make money and provide for our families,” she said.
The mother of six was forced into the poaching life when her husband, a former mineworker, returned home blind one day. She said she was not a thief nor a criminal, but a woman who had to go beyond means to take care of her family.
“When my late husband came home from the mine, he was very sick and had no money. It was not easy being a poacher because we would have to go to the ocean late at night to be able to poach. This was not something that one could do in broad daylight. We had to wait until it was dark outside to avoid being caught,” Makhubalo said.
She spoke about how dangerous it felt going into the ocean at that time of the night. She said she was forever worried about being eaten by sharks, drowning, or the fear of getting arrested.
“I was always lucky because I would outrun the police once we spotted them while poaching. The closest I have been to being arrested was when a police officer almost caught me poaching in East London. What saved me was that I immediately dropped the abalone back into the water, and they did not find anything on me. Had I been arrested, I would not have had anyone to bail me out of jail. It was then that I decided I needed to stop and find a safer income source,” she said.
Poaching abalone in the country is considered a criminal offence and an infringement of the Marine Living Resources Act 18 of 1998. When convicted, a poacher can spend up to five years’ imprisonment and be liable for a fine.
Since 2016, South Africa has lost about 96 million units of abalone to illegal poaching, according to a 2018 report titled “Empty Shells” by TRAFFIC, a non-governmental organisation involved in working worldwide on the trade in wild animals and plants to preserve biodiversity and pursue sustainable development.
Makhubalo left the poaching life in 2000 to join the art project soon after she learnt about it from one of her neighbours. She said through the project, she has since managed to build a home for her children and take them to school with the money she made from the project.
Founder of the art project and medical doctor Carol Hofmeyr said she started the project to teach women sewing skills so they could feel pride and a sense of achievement in making something beautiful with their hands when she moved to the province.
“When I came face to face with the struggle of this community, especially the women who had been marginalised socially, politically, racially, I was appalled and decided to try and find a way for them to express themselves and regain self-esteem. At first, I just went daily teaching drawing and providing material and threads, but the project grew,” Hofmeyr said.
The programme has 10 artists, and embroiderers are paid up front as they produce the work. It is then sent to various outlets for sale, and money from sales comes back into the art project account. Small items like bags and cushion covers have hardly any profit margin. More significant artworks bring a better profit to put back into running costs and materials.
“We have had many small exhibitions, but major ones were the National Arts Festival 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2010. We have exhibited five times in Edmonton, Canada, because part of our donor support comes from a community there. The Keiskamma altarpiece was shown in Toronto in 2006, at the world Aids conference in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, London, Hamburg and Germany. The current exhibition at Constitution Hill will be the only time all the works have been seen in one place,” she said.
The current ongoing exhibition will be on display until January 31. The art pieces will be the artists’ way to show how justice and democracy play out in their daily lives, hence they chose to exhibit at Constitutional Hill.