While there are many studies of the global influence of crops and
plants, this is perhaps the first social history based around a
plant in South Africa. Plants are not quite historical actors in
their own right, but their properties and potential help to shape
human history. Plants such as prickly pear tend to be invisible to
those who do not use them, or at least on the peripheries of
people's consciousness. This book explains why they were not
peripheral to many people in the Eastern Cape and why a wild and
sometimes invasive cactus from Mexico, that found its way around
the world over 200 years ago, remains important to African women in
shacks and small towns. The central tension at the heart of this
history concerns different and sometimes conflicting human views of
prickly pear. Some accepted or enjoyed its presence; others wished
to eradicate it. While commercial livestock farmers initially found
the plant enormously valuable, they came to see it as a scourge in
the early twentieth century as it invaded farms and commonages. But
for impoverished rural and small town communities of the Eastern
Cape it was a godsend. In some places it still provides a
significant income for poor black families. Debates about prickly
pear - and its cultivated spineless variety - have played out in
unexpected ways over the last century and more. Some scientists,
once eradicationists, now see varieties of spineless cactus as
plants for the future, eminently suited to a world beset by climate
change and global warming. The book also addresses central problems
around concepts of biodiversity. How do we balance, on the one
hand, biodiversity conservation with, on the other, a recognition
that plant transfers - and species transfers more generally - have
been part of dynamic production systems that have historically
underpinned human civilizations. American plants such as maize,
cassava and prickly pear have been used to create incalculable
value in Africa. Transferred plants are at the heart of many
agricultural systems, as well as hybrid botanical and cultural
landscapes, sometimes treasured, that are unlikely to be entirely
reversed. Some of these plants displace local species, but are
invaluable for local livelihoods. Prickly Pear explores this
dilemma over the long term and suggests that there must be a
significant cultural dimension to ideas about biodiversity. The
content of Prickly Pear is based on intensive archival research, on
interviews conducted in the Eastern Cape by the authors, as well as
on their observations of how people in the area use and consume the
plant.
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