Oranjezicht City Farm and the OZCF Market celebrate food, culture and community in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Oranjezicht City Farm is located on the central part of the original farm, ‘Oranje Zigt’, established in 1709, and which became the largest farm in the Upper Table Valley in the 19th century. Fed by a cluster of springs that provided perennial fresh water to Khoekhoen pastoralists as well as to sailors and the Company’s Gardens from the 17th century, this farm grew vegetables and fruit that fed the growing settlement and colony and supplied passing ships with essential produce to the turn of the 20th century. Swallowed by urban expansion, the productive farmlands were converted to a housing syndicate in 1901 and the original homestead standing on the site was demolished in 1957 to construct a bowling green, which fell into disuse and neglect in recent decades.
OZCF seeks to re-connect the Oranjezicht neighbourhood and the rest of Cape Town to this neglected piece of heritage through design, gardening activity and outreach, and to use it as a catalyst to build social cohesion across communities, to develop skills among the unemployed, to educate residents and their children and others about food, environmental and related issues, to beautify public space and to champion unused or under-utilised green spaces in the City Bowl.
