Josephine Mathebula sits against a cream white backdrop, presumably in her home in the South African province of Limpopo. She is poised and soft spoken but there is no doubt that she is firm and resolute as she speaks. Her head is wrapped in a royal blue cloth sporting pink and blue flowers with their accompanying leaves and stems. Her forehead creases just a little as she explains how she was a part of founding the Hleketani Community Food Garden.
In 1992, Josephine was witnessing the end of apartheid in South Africa. For many, the period between 1990 and 1994 was the tumultuous start of a new dawn, a struggle to give birth to freedom. During that time Josephine’s local area in Limpopo was facing an extreme regional drought and Josephine along with dozens of other women in her community responded by starting a community food garden called “Hleketani,” which means “to think [together]” in xiTsonga.
As of 2022, the food garden has 27 farmers and has fed the community healthy and balanced meals for over 30 years now, surviving even the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Vibert, the women have managed to “reduce poverty and increase positive health outcomes” for members of their community for just as long. For these women, feeding their community is simply a way of life to keep each other well. Academic settings may know this and other similar practices as mutual aid.
The farmers of the Hleketani Community food garden made a direct positive impact on food security in their community after facing a natural crisis which the state did not adequately address for them. Food security falls under social infrastructure, and 27 women in Limpopo did not wait until they had the academic language to articulate that they had been let down by the state before taking it upon themselves to work on their inadequate social infrastructure.
The Australian Infrastructure Audit defines social infrastructure as infrastructure comprising the facilities, spaces, services and networks that support the quality of life and wellbeing of our communities. According to the audit, this also includes services such as health and education, aged care, access to green spaces and waterways, recreation, arts and culture, social housing, and justice and emergency services. Law Insider similarly refers to social infrastructure as community facilities, services and networks that meet social needs and enhance community wellbeing.
The nature of the extractive economy created by capitalism/neoliberalism and the late stage capitalist frameworks that govern social infrastructure in 2024 may be the reason why Infrastructure Australia, Law Insider, and other organisations popular enough to have their definition shown on Google, consider healthcare, education, and access to clean water as “services.” These definitions are evidence of the commodification of basic human rights under late-stage capitalism. Ultimately, however, what social infrastructure is is a response to the rights of people to be well and taken care of as practised and proven by the Hleketani Community Food Garden founders.
The systems that comprise social infrastructure are actually ways for communities to practise care that have been outsourced to the state. Pre-capitalist societies, Indigenous peoples, and advocates for mutual aid have an understanding of this. Indigenous communities such as the Potawatomi practise taking care of each other and the world around us as a way of life, while according to Spade, “mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build a shared understanding of why people need what they need”. Trees and other plants understand social infrastructure as a scale of care as well and practice education, healthcare and other ways of wellbeing in ways that human societies can learn from to reform and revolutionise our own social infrastructure.
The varied approaches to care can be learnt from Indigenous peoples, like from the Potawatomi and Haudenosaunee Nations, and the more-than-human world. Indigenous beliefs are key, as they govern their interactions with the natural world and each other, and of ways in which plant life works to take care of each other and animals including Homo sapiens.
A valuable lesson for humans lies in how trees use mycorrhizal networks to communicate with each other, redistribute nutrients, and produce chemicals that ward off parasites and fight against stress. This is thought by some scientists including Kimmerer to be the reason why mast-fruiting trees all produce fruit at the same time, though populations experience variability on the basis of the age and vigour of individuals.
While the exact science of mast fruiting itself is still widely debated, the most widely supported theory purports that the mycorrhizal network takes carbohydrates from trees in the position to produce excess through photosynthesis and redistributes it to trees that are smaller, weaker, more shaded, or sicker so that they have the energy required to produce fruit. Scientifically, this phenomenon is called the mother tree hypothesis.
According to Hennrickson et al., “the evidence of a significant net [Carbon] transfer via common mycorrhizal networks is still lacking” so it is important to note that different scholars of western science have different views of how true this theory is. Still, Henrikkson cites the hypothesis, stating that this redistribution is in order to “facilitate the growth and survival [of the smaller, shaded trees]”. In essence, trees give what they have to make sure every tree in the forest is well.
Gorzelak et al. (2015) posit that the mycorrhizal network is also used to transport defence signals and according to Kimmerer, these signals are released when a tree is infected with a disease or parasite or is under another type of stress. The affected tree sends the signals as a warning so that other trees can defend themselves through the release of their own chemicals. She also goes so far as to assert that because of this process, the sick tree can get well again.
What if our way of revolutionising healthcare was showing up for each other outside of hospitals? What if we used modes of communication such as town halls, visits to neighbours, and women’s societies to share the knowledge and resources between us that would keep the most vulnerable of us out of hospital? What if we were willing to redistribute the things that keep our bodies well such as fruits and vegetables from our gardens or our grandmothers’ knowledge of herbs to give to those in our communities who can’t buy these things with money? How would this help us build power and keep our kin out of hospital?
Similarly, mast fruiting in the natural world is reflective of the need of human societies to band together against elements that cause grief. Mast fruiting is defined by Henkel, Mayor, and Woolley (2005) as “the synchronous heavy fruiting of a plant species at intervals greater than one year.” There are three defining characteristics to note about mast-fruiting trees: they don’t produce fruit every year, they take environmental cues, and they never produce alone.
In Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the Pecan—from the Juglandaceae family—as her masting tree of choice and the principles referenced in relation to Pecan trees are also applicable to other mast-fruiting trees in general. Kimmerer and Henkel, Mayor, and Woolley report that the time—sometimes years—spent between fruiting events is used for the gathering of resources, namely carbohydrates and mineral nutrients. When the plants have reached the threshold levels necessary to produce fruit, they do.
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According to Henkel, Mayor, and Woolley, “mast fruiting is an evolved predator avoidance strategy with seed/seedling predators periodically satiated and unable to maintain effective populations in the intermast period [...].” Kimmerer uses squirrels’ relationships with Pecan trees to explain what this means: when the Pecan trees produce nuts, they produce a lot more than the squirrels need at the time in order to ensure that some seeds (the nuts) are still left over to grow the next generation of Pecans, while also allowing the squirrels to store some. This enables the squirrel population to grow because of their increased access to resources, increased capacity to invest energy into reproduction, and decreased exposure to predators.
The growth of the squirrel population then causes the growth of the animal populations that consume squirrels such as foxes and eagles because when the nuts run out, the squirrels have to leave their homes in search of food, providing predators with more opportunity to catch food on the hunt. This in turn causes a sharp decline in the squirrel population, at which point the Pecans mast again. Kimmerer says one can almost hear them whispering to each other: “There are just a few squirrels left. Wouldn’t this be a good time to make some nuts?”’ When the trees do produce flowers and eventually nuts, every single one in the forest does so at the same time. The mother tree hypothesis is debated to be the science behind this.
What can we learn from mast-fruiting trees? What if we invested more time into gathering energy in the form of proper political education, mutual aid schemes and care work in order to fuel mass direct action? Mast-fruiting trees are usually found in boreal forests, which are located in areas where “freezing temperatures occur for six to eight months of the year,” according to Dong and Anderson.
What if some of us kept watch while others got a break from the cold? What if we invested in enabling each other to rest in recognition of the long road ahead of us? If capitalism requires mass exploitation to function, then only mass resistance will topple it. What if we spent time building power so that we all had the empathy to resist at the same time? What if we are each other’s social infrastructure?
Trees give without asking for much in return—a trait humans could benefit from. Among the many functions of trees are water transport, water and air filtration, cooling terrestrial surfaces, making medicine, making food, and making colourful autumns. According to Ellison et al., trees aid in the production of rainfall by a process called evapotranspiration, by which evaporation from soil and plant surfaces and transpiration of water from plants release moisture into the air.
This moisture is carried by winds when “forest-driven air pressure patterns transport atmospheric moisture towards continental interiors” and other parts of the earth with less natural access to water beyond coasts. Further along in the cycle stemming from this evapotranspiration, precipitation (rain) occurs.
Air purification through photosynthesis is another function of trees and other plant life. The trees require carbon for carbohydrates and produce oxygen as a byproduct of this process. For animals, human or otherwise, this byproduct is necessary for life. Trees exchange carbon dioxide—dangerous for animals in large quantities—for oxygen, which is life giving. Further, trees serve as water purifiers by preventing soil erosion and trapping sediment by slowing sediment runoff, ensuring that groundwater coming from the surface is clean and also that rivers are not full of undrinkable water, according to Leguedois et al.
Plants practise generosity in different ways and Kimmerer’s tree of choice in the area of selfless giving is the Maple, from the family Aceraceae, which produces sap that must be boiled over a period of a few hours to produce a gallon of syrup. Vascular plants, under which all trees fall, have two primary vessels in charge of transporting minerals and nutrients. These are called the phloem (for food: nutrients) and the xylem (for water: minerals).
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Since carbohydrates are produced in the leaves through photosynthesis but must be stored in the roots as starch and utilised by other parts of the plant for life processes, transport in the phloem goes from the top to the bottom of the plant. Conversely, since water is taken in at the roots but needed in the leaves, transport in the xylem goes from the bottom of the plant to the top. In the Maple (Acer saccharum), the function of the xylem periodically changes.
Kimmerer explains it this way: the Maple tree does not only produce sugar for itself, but for people, too. “It takes a lot of sugar to feed people and buds, so the tree uses its sapwood, the xylem, as the conduit […]. Sugar flows upstream for a few weeks in the spring. But when the buds break and leaves emerge, they start making sugar on their own and the sapwood returns to its work as the water conduit.”
To illustrate, it takes 151.416 litres of maple sap to produce one gallon (3.76 litres) of maple syrup over approximately 12 hours. The maple exhausts copious amounts of energy repurposing its vessels and making the sap, and on the part of the human in search of a sweet pancake topping or a small taste of home, much patience is required. You can almost hear them whispering to each other: “I think you’re worth it.”
What if we practised giving without expecting much in return: a joke, a doodle, a haiku? What if as an act of resistance against the capitalist economy that drives climate change we gave each other things that build community: a hug, undivided attention, a compliment? What if we started small and scaled up to giving each other gifts that inconvenience us: a cup of sugar, a meal, a ride to school, a room to stay in or rent money during a precarious housing situation? What if, as the maples tell the Potawatomi, we whispered to each other “I think you’re worth the energy”?
Although the trees don’t require much, it is still polite to say “thank you”. The Haudenosaunee and the Potawatomi nations have an understanding of this as reflected in their respective thanksgiving rituals to the more-than-human world. For the Haudenosaunee, this is a Thanksgiving address recited at the beginning and end of every week at schools in the Onondaga Nation: “Today we have gathered and when we look upon the faces around us we see that the cycles of life continue”; the children start in Onondaga, “We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.”
As with many indigenous cultural practices around the world, there is no official script for this important recitation as the Onondaga Nation’s tradition is passed down orally and the thanksgiving address is also a personal experience as much as it is communal. As a result, the address is different depending on who is speaking.
In this version, the children continue: “So now let us bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People. Now our minds are one.” The children proceed to thank the earth for providing their feet with steady ground to walk on, the water for quenching their thirst and the fish for cleansing and purifying the water—all the time ending their thanks with “And now our minds are one.”
Hadn’t they said they would be “giving thanks to each other as People”? Why are the children thanking the elements and the animals and the plants? The Potawatomi Nation regards the more-than-human world as persons, as reported by Kimmerer. This is reflected in their language and Kimmerer gives this example: “of an inanimate being, like a table we [the Potawatomi] ask ‘What is it?’ And we answer ‘Dopwen yewe: Table it is’. But of an apple we must ask ‘Who is that being?’ And we reply ‘"Mshimin yawe: Apple that being is’.”
Kimmerer explains that this use of language “reminds us in every sentence of our kinship with the animate world”. Perhaps this kinship with the animate world is the reason the children go on to thank the plant world for feeding them and making them medicine. Then they thank the trees, the standing people, for shelter, shade, and food: “With one mind we greet and thank the Tree life. And now our minds are one.” The address goes on in much the same fashion.
Kimmerer posits that both the address and thankfulness itself are revolutionary acts because “In a consumer society, contentment is a radical position”. Capitalism is highly dependent on society’s discontentment; it’s the only way people will be guaranteed to go and buy things, fuelling an economy dependent on overconsumption and overproduction.
How much more would we have to be grateful for if school wasn’t a place we went to be confronted by colonial relationships with teachers and other students but, as Alexis Pauline Gumbs puts it, was “a scale at which we could care for each other and move together”? What if school was a place where more than one system of knowledge was considered valid?
What if concepts stemming from indigenous ways of knowing were not dismissed because they have not been proven by western science, but encouraged out of respect for and value of generations of learning? What if the curricula in schools encouraged diversity in thought instead of indoctrination with no critical thought and children were given the space to make “grammar mistakes” by calling apples people in their discovery of animacy? What are the possibilities of toppling capitalism by teaching each other to be grateful?
In his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney posits this: “Often, at the level of a district of a colony, there would be discrimination in providing social amenities [such as healthcare] on the basis of contribution to exportable surplus.” In other words, the more monetary value a colony was able to provide its colonising power, the better the quality of their social infrastructure or “social amenities.”
It should come as no surprise then, that in modern day society, poorer countries, cities, neighbourhoods, and families have little to no access to quality healthcare, education, or even access to fruits and vegetables as alluded to by Manthey, a PhD fellow researching geosciences and society. This information then calls into question the colonial nature of the way that social infrastructure is run.
The reflections offered throughout this work have in common that they tend to be inconvenient—they require human societies to realise that we are each other’s social infrastructure. Unfortunately, the current iteration of global social infrastructure establishes limitations and determining factors to decide who should receive help and when, such as race, income, disability, geographical location, and even sobriety, according to Spade. Ismathu Gwendolyn further posits, “welfare systems require us to be in dire need before receiving help,” and this statement is supported by Professor of Economics Robert Allen Moffitt in his research on deservingness hierarchies in the U.S. welfare system.
Trees thus teach much-needed lessons to be paid close attention to. They teach lessons of communication, mutual aid, investing energy into one another, reciprocity, and gratefulness. On a similar vein, the Potawatomi and Haudenosaunee teach lessons of moderation and thankfulness, and the women of the Hleketani Community Food Garden teach lessons of proactiveness and that care structures can and should exist outside of formal institutions. These lessons are important to learn from in the process of examining the ways in which global leadership can apply them to social infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, elderly homes, sanitation infrastructure, and urban and spatial planning.
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In drawing on the Hleketani women’s initiative and others like it, indigenous knowledge systems, and the natural world, we glimpse a vision of social infrastructure that moves beyond services dictated by capital. Instead, it becomes a living, breathing expression of care, reciprocity, resilience, and building power.
Like the trees that share resources through mycorrhizal networks or the Potawatomi and Haudenosaunee peoples who express gratitude to each other, and the more-than-human world, our communities hold the potential to be rooted in practices that prioritise wellbeing through interdependence without absolving global leadership of their responsibility to ensure that the basic human rights of all people are met.
As the limits of late-stage capitalism make themselves evident, it is clear that solutions are not found in unregulated, unfettered extraction of resources, exploitation of human life, and commodification of basic human rights, but in reclaiming mutual aid, generosity, and shared power as alternative frameworks of organising our economies. Communities of colour, poor communities, and other marginalised communities are not new to experiencing inadequate care by the state. By turning away from a model that suggests that everything has to be a transaction, we not only reimagine what social infrastructure can be but also plant seeds for societies that genuinely sustain and uplift all who are part of them.
Edited by Asvika Prakash and Thenthamizh SS
Tatenda Dlali (she/her) is a student of Biology and a writer at Political Pandora. Her research interests include conservation ecology, the intersections between gender, migration, and climate change, and decolonising the climate justice movement.
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Keywords:
Community Resilience, Social Infrastructure, Mutual Aid, Indigenous Wisdom, Sustainable Care, Collective Action, Food Security, Hleketani Community Food Garden, Natural Resources, Mycorrhizal Networks, Climate Change Resistance, Grassroots Solutions, Environmental Care, Eco-Friendly Practices, Collective Wellbeing.
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