Honeybush (Cyclopia spp.)

by Sthembile Ndwandwe

Introduction

Honeybush, Cyclopia Vent, is an endemic perennial shrub with height reaching 3m and generally grows on coastal districts and mountainous areas of the Eastern and Western Cape (Schutte, 1995). It belongs to the tribe Podalyrieae and is classified as a member of the Fabaceae (Schutte, 1995; Dahlgren, 1968) with 23 species recognized under the genus (Schutte, 1995). Of the 23 species, only 7 are commercialized namely, C. intermedia., C. genistoides., C. subternata., C. sessiflora., C. maculata., C. longifolia., and C. plicata. The leaves, stalk, and flowers of the honeybush plant have been collected for generations in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces to produce herbal tea for both household consumption and for sales. The increasing demand of the species in the export market has raised several issues about the sustainability of the resource at local level, market development and tea or product quality. Other pertinent issues are about the participation of local communities in the sector, unequal landownership and resource rights, and questions of indigeneity following the introduction of the Access and Benefit Sharing legislation in the sector. Using knowledge gathered in the processes of carrying out research in the Langkloof and Garden Route areas, and participation in honeybush stakeholder platforms such as the Honeybush Community of Practice, this case discusses issues related to land tenure and resource rights and their impact on local communities’ involvement in the sector. The case illuminates that land and resource rights, and access are fundamental requirements if local communities are to benefit from wild foods use and related markets.

Industry overview

The honeybush market is concentrated on the tea industry and is internationally authorized in the food and food supplements (DFFE, 2021; McGregor, 2017). Since the 19th century honeybush has been eyed by the state as part of its attempts to foster minor industries from indigenous plants (Attorney-General, 1906; Caspareuthus, 1907; Colonial Secretary, 1906; MacOwen, 1894; The Under-Secretary for Agriculture, 1894; Webb, 1907). However, the honeybush industry remained minor with about 3664.614 tonnes exported between 2010 and 2021 (SAHTA, 2021). Although for years the market focused on tea production, there are other developing market segments being pioneered through research and innovation. The most recent is a Red Dawn patent (patent ref. 2013/068999) for improved process for the manufacture of alcoholic beverages in 52 countries. The invention uses honeybush extracts to replace preservatives in wine, cider, and beer.

About 80% of honeybush is wild harvested (Hobson & Joubert, 2011; Joubert et al., 2011; McGregor, 2017b; Slabbert et al., 2019) and in 2011 about 200 hectares were estimated to be under cultivation (Joubert et al., 2011). About 90% of the annual crop is exported to Germany, United States of America, and the Netherlands, Japan, India, United Kingdom, Poland, China, and Sri Lanka (Joubert et al., 2011; McGregor, 2017; DFFE, 2021). About 15% is packed and sold locally (DFFE, 2021; McGregor, 2017b) by local companies who also participate in the export market. The companies include but are not limited to Khoisan Gourmet, Melmont Honeybush tea, International Foods, Goldberger Trading, Honeybush Natural Products Limited, Agulhas Honeybush tea, Cape Honeybush tea, Heights Tea Enterprise, Kuurland, Pure Wild Honeybush, and the Langkloof Honeybush Company. In 2014 it was estimated that the honeybush value chain employs approximately 500 workers (DAFF, 2014). The shift to an export-oriented market has narrowed participation of local communities who for generations have harvested and processed their own tea for household use and for sales in the informal market. Local communities in the honeybush growing regions often have insecure land tenure. These communities reported that when the overseas market started to grow, they were overtaken by those who had land that grows the wild resource and those with secured land tenure and could freely participate in cultivation initiatives. In honeybush growing regions land and resource rights continue to be racially and capitalistically defined. This has roots in colonial land dispossessions, a reluctance of the democratic government to expropriate land without compensation, fortress conservation regime and a general failure of land reform policies. The impact of these tensions and regimes on communities’ access and right to the land and honeybush resource are discussed below.

Land and resource rights interface

Land tenure and resource rights remain a challenge for the honeybush sector. The commercialized honeybush resource is mostly sourced from the Langkloof region and the Southern Cape region (the Garden Route). Land in these regions has changed hands over time affecting resource access and rights. Much of the resource is wild harvested in land that is on privately owned farms and in the land that is under nature conservation including Protected Areas and private nature reserves such as the Kromme Riviers, Skilderkrantz Hoogte nature reserves in the Langkloof area.  

Protected Areas and Private Nature Reserves

The resource that grows in protected areas and private nature reserves is not harvested. Historically permits were granted to the local communities to harvest honeybush and other forest produce from the “crown lands[1]” and conservancies[2]. This is evidenced by the archival documents on coloured communities’ application or petitions to be granted permits to harvest honeybush in crown lands as far as the 19th century (Department of Agriculture, 1896, 1898; Resident Magistrate Office, 1903). However, as attested by households who for generations have used honeybush for sales and subsistence, harvesting in the crown lands and conservancies stopped in the seventies. An elder and retired harvester in one of the communities explained that “we got the tea at the farm […] and occasionally found [it] at the forest, at that time the Nature Conservancy [Conservation] was not yet in” and further stated that it’s a problem now, because the mountain has the tea, but the tea is now closed by nature preserve […] We struggled to get the tea […] Tea preservation sits with the tea. There are thousands, thousands, thousands of acres of tea within Nature Conservation here in the field” (OH01/2019).

The seventies period coincides with the passing of the Nature and Environmental Conservation Ordinance (Ordinance No.19 of 1974) which prohibits the plucking of flora from Protected Areas (Nature and Environmental Conservation Ordinance, 1974). Protected Areas with honeybush distribution includes nine nature reserves: the Garden Route National Park, Baviaanskloof Nature Reserve, Towerkop Nature Reserve, Formosa Provincial Nature Reserve, Gamkaberg Nature Reserve, Kammanassie Nature Reserve, Anysberg Nature Reserve, Groot Swartberg Nature Reserve, Rooiberg Nature Reserve (McGregor, 2017a). These areas are managed by two Nature Conservation Agencies involved in the honeybush sector, that is, Cape Nature in the Western Cape, and the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA) in the Eastern Cape, and also land under the South African National Parks (SANParks). The ordinance is still in place and was preceded by the1888 Forest Act, which legally restricted access to the forests and served the interest of the state conservation agenda. This agenda revolved around the rhetoric that regarded indigenous forests as a national asset for revenue generation and disregarded livelihoods and use by communities that depended on forest produce (Brown, 2001). Communities residing in the Knysna and Tsitsikamma areas of the former Midlands conservancy still struggle with access to honeybush and other forest produce. On the George side Haarlem also struggle with access to honeybush that grows in Protected Areas and often speak of the mundane behaviours that as communities observe in the management of Protected Area. For example, how the tea in the Formosa Nature Reserve, the land managed by ECPTA wastes away instead of being given to harvesters. Also, how Cape Nature burns tea that can be harvested by those who do not have direct access to land, and a respondent articulated this stating that “50, 80 years ago people was working the tea, and the tea is still there. But the problem we have with Cape Nature, every couple of years they burn a lot of money down and us people can work” (Community member/2021). 

Private Farms

Local communities historically sourced wild honeybush from the private farms which were and continue to be predominantly white owned or as one community member put it “the white counterpart” (Key Informant/Farmers Association/2021). Shifting the honeybush sector into an export-oriented market has meant that the resource is now collected and sold by farmers to the processing facilities, and they use their own or preferred harvesting teams. These teams are often comprised of exploited[3] migrant farmworkers from across the continent, and teams that are led by white harvest team leaders who are often retired professionals in the region. A respondent who spoke on the white harvest team leader phenomenon stated that “others will only allow and this sounds very derogatory but it is what it is, white harvesting team managers to bring their teams on, established guys that have been harvesting for many many years now, so it’s a typical scenario where he owns a bakkie, he’s got the contacts, he is buddies with these guys, he knows them he meets them at the golf club” (PP02/2019). Farmers in this context are actors with land tenure and resource rights. This has enabled them to dictate who benefit from the market, to control who gains access to the resource and therefore who can benefit from honeybush use. This has left communities without a resource and with no choice but to shift attention to the land under conservation. Local communities often mention that farmers “did not care” about honeybush, in this way communities used various forms of social relations with farmers to secure access to the resource. A respondent articulated communities’ generational dependence on those who own land and existing marginalization in the market:

All the years, over the years we our forefathers did survive, they survive with honeybush, because whenever they got any difficulties in financial circumstances or situations they can go into the mountains, get the permission of the commercial farmers because all the land and the mountains in any case belongs to one or other white commercial farm, so over the years we did harvest honeybush tea but with the permission of the white commercial farm who at that time did not have an interest in the harvesting of honeybush, but since the market was developed overseas […] but now it’s not a survival thing anymore, it’s a money thing, it’s a business, so that totally change the field and the players you see (KIBF02/2021).

Historically landownership regimes have privileged white commercial farmers, commercial forestry, and fortress conservation while marginalizing local communities who remain excluded as evident in their struggle for access to the wild resource and land to produce cultivated resource.

State land and other formal resource access arrangements

Land reforms initiatives such as the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE)[4], the Communal Property Associations (CPAs) and agreements with various landowners including municipal land are in place. These arrangements come with varying degrees of rights to the resource and land. These initiatives have had positive outcomes in terms of ensuring harvesters access to the wild resource and to land for those who wish to participate in honeybush cultivation. However, in some cases formal property rights and resource rights has not guaranteed access to honeybush. As argued by Ribot & Peluso (2020), “formal rights, including property rights, do not guarantee access” (pp. 302).

Those who are beneficiaries of land reform programmes often must maintain the cashflow or keep the farm that they inherit profitable. This burden of productivism placed on land reform beneficiaries was communicated in various ways by the three BBBEE farms and CPA03. For example, CPA03 and BBBEE02 shared that they were not planning on cultivating honeybush on their land unless they are sure it will be profitable, and that their priority is to create jobs for the community. The community members and farmworkers who inherited CPA03 and BBBEE02 respectively, are part of a community that views honeybush and its use as their heritage but have stopped to participate because of land issues. BBBEE03 shared the same sentiments with regards to productivism, however because of his passion for honeybush he plans on using few hectares of land for its cultivation. He considered this a more viable move stating that “I can still put some honeybush tea a couple of hectares in here, because they are not so much dependent on water as the fruit, for instance. But I haven't got the financial means to do it. The land must be cultivated […] it's a much more viable business than the current fruit trees that haven't got any future now [the farm struggles with access to water]. But it will still cost me a lot of money to uproot those trees and take it out” (BBBEE03/2021). Another pertinent issue is that he has formal rights to the land for a period of 30 years, however, for twelve years he has been waiting for government to approve his general farm business plan. This affects his ability to benefit from the land while his mentor, a white commercial farmer earns about R15000 ($969.05) per month from government for providing mentorship.

Lack of access to resources such as water, tenure contestations and conflicts also undermine most of the arrangements. A honeybush plantation in Mission station01 has laid fallow for about 7 years. The reasons given for this involves the municipality refusal to renew the lease and intra-cooperative conflicts. Both these setbacks undermine the cooperative access to the resource. Similar issues exist in CPA02 where only one member of the cooperative harvests honeybush. The CPA is comprised of six members who received a government farm. Other than conflicts and other issues raised, most of the members in these arrangements have to seek employment elsewhere to sustain their households.  

Collaborations for securing honeybush resource rights

Harvesters, cooperatives, and individuals from communities have since the late 1990s and early 2000s formed collaborations with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), research institutions and local government to secure access to the honeybush resource and the market. One of the key collaborations was a Public Private Partnership (PPP) project which comprised of cooperatives in the Eastern Cape province, a private commercial landowner, local government, and international donors. It involved 12 registered cooperatives that had been established from the Tsitsikamma area through to the Misgund area in the Langkloof. The broad aims of the PPP were to secure access to land where a honeybush plantation was to be establish, secure the market and to build a processing facility for communities. Although both the plantation and processing facility were established, the whole PPP web failed because it was laden with elite capture and access to the wild resource was not secured to ensure supply to the facility. Lack of access to the wild resource was illuminated when the plantation where communities had resource rights caught fires. Fires are a frequent phenomenon and a risk in the honeybush growing regions and the fynbos biome. Those who were involved in setting up the PPP did not fully understand difficulties of accessing the wild resource, one of them stated that:

But it is a fact in this particular area that I think almost without exception all the land is owned by white commercial farmers or commercial farming groups ok. And there are still prejudices, prejudices about who is coming onto their veld, who is going to harvest who is going to do these things ok. So, there was another challenge that we hadn’t fully anticipated in this whole thing ok (PP02/2019).

More positive outcomes have been observed where collaborations for access to land, honeybush resource and markets are fostered by NGOs. However, these are often short-lived and just like the state land reform arrangements discussed above, the collaborations often emulate racial and unequal hierarchies that exist in the regions that host the honeybush resource.

Closing remarks 

Secure land tenure and rights to the resource needs to be made a priority in South Africa particularly as government upscales the commercialization of honeybush and other species that are of commercial value to the nation. The actors who benefit from the honeybush sector are those who have secure land tenure and direct access to the resource. The actors who are not benefiting from the sector are communities who for centuries produced tea without secure land tenure and rights to the resource. Thus, although formal rights to the land and to the resource do not always guarantee access, secure land tenure and property rights remain fundamental for levelling power imbalances in the honeybush sector and ensuring that local communities derive benefit from it. Moreso as imbalances are a direct result of politically unresolved colonial landownership patterns that were designed to exclude those who are black, coloured, and those of Khoi and San dissent.

Click here to download a summary table of the case study.

[1] In South Africa Crown lands are a product of a form of land ownership that culminate from 1813 Proclamation that legalized the rights of colonists to hold land and sell it as free property. The Crown lands legislation, Crown Lands Act of 1860, provided a base for a set of several laws that catered for the allotment of land under the Crown particularly for agricultural purposes. it assumed that the African continent was ownerless and used colonial powers to unequally allocate land that was not yet under the occupation of Europeans (Ramutsindela, 2012).

[2] Some of the areas where the wild honeybush resource grows fell into one of the first three conservancies in the country, the Midlands conservancy, which incorporated the George, Knysna and Tsitsikamma Forests areas

[3] Although this is not always the case, harvesters who migrate from different parts of the African continent in search of jobs are primarily given access to private farms as farmworkers and therefore often do harvesting for the landowners as part of farm work which results in them being paid a minimum wage for harvesting instead of being paid per kilogram or an agreed rate between the team leader and their members.

[4] The BBBEE ‘means the viable economic empowerment of all black people [including], in particular women, workers, youth, people with disabilities and people living in rural areas, through diverse but integrated socio-economic strategies’ (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Amendment Act, 2013)

References

Attorney-General. 1906. Letter from the Attorney-General: Patent Theodor Caspareuthus. In AG (Vol. 1662, Issue 58/299). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.

Based Black Economic Empowerment Amendment Act. 2013. Government Gazette: Republic of South Africa Rephabliki ya Afrika Borwa, 27. Pretoria, South Africa.

Bolam, J.J. 1902. Enclosed Letter: Local Medical Doctors Testimonial on Medicinal Qualities. In Archives: Vol. AGR (611) (Issue T83). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.

Brown, K. 2001. The Conservation and Utilisation of the Natural World: Silviculture in the Cape Colony, c. 1902–19101. Environment and History, 7(4):427–474.

Caspareuthus, T. 1907. Cyclopia Tea - Caspareuthus Letter to Government. In AGR (Vol. 621, Issue T121). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.

Church, A.H. 1870. On Cyclopic Acid, A New Florescent Substance Extracted from the Cyclopia Vogelii. The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, 6(third series), 693–693.

Church, A.H. 1881. Note on Cape Tea. The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, XI (1880–1881), 693-693.

Colonial Secretary. 1906. Letters Patent 3808: Application of Theodor Caspareuthus. In AG (Vol. 1662, Issue 58/299). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.

DAFF. 2014. A Profile of The South African Honeybush Tea Market Value Chain 2014. The Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries. Pretoria, South Africa.

Department of Agriculture. 1896. Application to gather tea and buchu in Zuurbraak: Swellendam. Western Cape Archives and Records Service: Source AGR, Vol 751, Ref F2491.

Department of Agriculture. 1898. Licences for Bush Tea: Swellendam division. Western Cape Archives and Records Service: Source AGR, Vol 751, Ref F2491.

DFFE. 2021. Draft Biodiversity Management Plan: Consultation on the Biodiversity Management Plans for Aloe Ferox and Honeybush Species (Cyclopia subternata and Cyclopia intermedia). The Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment. Pretoria, South Africa.

Greenish, H.G. 1881. Cape Tea. The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, XI (1880–1881), 568–573.

Hobson, S., & Joubert, M. 2011. Eastern Cape Honeybush Tea Project Industry Overview, Assessment and Proposed Interventions (Issue June).

Joubert, E., Joubert, M. E., Bester, C., de Beer, D., & de Lange, J. H. 2011. Honeybush (Cyclopia spp.): From local cottage industry to global markets - The catalytic and supporting role of research. South African Journal of Botany, 77(4):887–907. Available here.

MacOwen, P. 1894. Cape Tea (so-called). In AGR (Vol. 206, Issue T1534). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.

McGregor, G. 2017a. Guidelines for the sustainable harvesting of wild honeybush. Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Cape Town. Available here.

McGregor, G. 2017b. An Overview of the Honeybush Industry. Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Cape Town. Available here.

McGregor, G. 2017c. The Implications of fynbos ecology for Cyclopia species.

R Marloth Analytical & Bacteriological Laboratory. 1906. Report on the Chemical Analysis of Two Samples of Cyclopia-Tea Labelled: No.1 Crude Tea, No.2 Refined Tea.

Ramutsindela, M. 2012. Property rights, land tenure and the racial discourses. GeoJournal, 77(6):753–763. Available here.

Resident Magistrate Office. 1903. Application from Coloured inhabitants of Haarlem for permission to pick Bush Tea. Western Cape Archives and Records Service: Source AGR, Vol 1/873, Ref L16115.

Rouget, M., Barnett, M., Cowling, R. M., Cumming, T., Daniels, F., Hoffman, M. T., Knight, A., Manuel, J., Nel, J., Parker, A., Raimondo, D., & Rebelo, T. 2014. Conserving the Cape Floristic Region. In, Fynbos: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation of a Megadiverse Region (pp. 321–336). Oxford University Press. Available here.

SAHTA. 2021. Perishable Products Export Control Board (PPECB): Honeybush KG exports 2010 to 2021.

Slabbert, E. L., Malgas, R. R., Veldtman, R., & Addison, P. 2019. Honeybush (Cyclopia spp.) phenology and associates arthropos diversity in the Overberg region, South Africa. Bothalia: African Biodiversity & Conservation, 49(1):1–13. Available here.

The Nature and Environmental Conservation Ordinance. 1974. Ordinance No.19 of 1974. Cape Town, South Africa.

The Under-Secretary for Agriculture. 1894. Letter on the Question of Fostering Minor Industries. In AGR (Vol. 103, Issue T364). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.

Webb, F. 1907. Cape Bush Tea: Encouragement of Industry. In AGR (Vol. 611, Issue T83). National Archives of South Africa: Cape Town Archives Repository.