These are among the books that landed on my desk in September. Some will be reviewed in full later. – Vivien Horler
Cape Peninsula Coastal Gardening: A little bit of wild, by Tara Dalton (Published by Tara Dalton)
I live on the edge of Zandvlei, about 4km from Muizenberg beach in Cape Town.
There are pretty views, but we get howling south-easters in summer (and spring and autumn and winter, judging by this year), and the wind is often salt-laden, withering tender shoots. The stuff laughingly referred to as soil is sand.
My sister-in-law, however, lives in Clifton, where in winter her garden faces the full force of Atlantic storms and winds.
Greenery covers what were once bare dunes at Clovelly beach
In short, the coast of the Cape Peninsula is a hostile environment for a keen gardener. I am not a keen gardener, but I do like my garden to look half-way decent.
Which is why I pounced on this fabulous book.
Tara Dalton, who studied history and law at Oxford, retrained as a garden designer and horticulturalist in the UK. She has also gardened in Australia and Cape Town, and understands hostile environments.
While creating an attractive garden is part of Dalton’s philosophy, there is much more. One concern is biodiversity loss caused by factors including urban and rural development. And this affects other species along the food chain, including invertebrates and birds that are vital for pollination.
Detail of the spring flowers on the Clovelly dunes
“When one aspect of the ecological chain is affected, there is a knock-on effect that leads to loss of species in both the plant and animal kingdoms.”
In 2013 the SA National Biodiversity Institute noted that at least 13 plant species that used to occur in greater Cape Town had been declared “extinct in the wild”.
What with urban development, a lack of awareness, invasive species, too many fires and, of course, global climate change, “we could lose not only individual species but entire ecosystems that have evolved over millennia”.
This beautifully illustrated volume is an important contribution to helping return nature to urban settings.
Dalton says in her preface she has focused on the Cape Peninsula as it is home to one of the most diverse – yet one of the most threatened – plant diversities in the world. Our peninsula, covering just 470km2, has more than 2 500 indigenous flowering plant species, and more than 160 of them are endemic to this area, meaning they grow naturally nowhere else in the world.
Compare this to the entire British Isles, covering more than 250 000km2, which has fewer than 1 500 indigenous plant species.
So this book is a celebration as well as a guide for peninsula gardeners.
It focuses on indigenous plants found in the coastal lowlands of the peninsula rather than those high in the mountains.
Dalton points out that along our coastline there are bands of soil – mainly acid and sandy, or alkaline and sandy – which determine which plants will grow well. The bands are fynbos, dunes, Cape Flats dune strandveld and seasonal wetlands.
Each plant entry is identified by which ecosystem it prefers, its eventual height, and whether it wants sun, shade or a mixture of the two. Then follows a brief description of the plant, and how to propagate it.
Occasionally individual plants are celebrated in a longer section, such as the Cape Sweetpea/ Okie Bean (Dipogan lignosus) a climbing perennial with lots of pink to purple flowers from August to January.
Dalton writes: “For the foodie or cook … the deciding factor is that its flowers and young pods are absolutely delicious raw in salads, and steaming the pods make for a truly worthwhile local vegetable…”.
It is tolerant of salt air, coastal winds, semi-shade and poor soils, is a soil enricher as a legume, and is pretty – all of which means “it really does deserve a place in coastal gardens”.
Prize-winning landscape designer Leon Kluge says in a foreword: “If this book inspires you to plant one indigenous species, to remove one inappropriate exotic, or to see your garden as part of a larger living system, then it has already done important work.”
PS: The other day, for the first time in a while, I went for a walk on Clovelly beach near Fish Hoek. There the City of Cape Town has been securing the dunes by planting a variety of suitable dune-loving plants, surrounding small areas with protective shade cloth.
I was stunned by the beauty and success of the project. Once barren and shifting dunes are covered in green foliage and spring flowers. Gardens on and near the beach can clearly be a success, if you have some idea of what you’re doing – and Tara Dalton’s terrific book will help you there.
The Burfee Seller’s Daughters, by Shafinaaz Hassim (Kwela Books)
To the uninitiated, like me, burfee is an Indian sweet, “a snowy confectionary that made addics of anyone who encountered the sweet experience”. And it was a recipe for burfee, the pinnacle of the sweet treats made by Alibhai Mithaiwala, that he brought to South Africa from India and became the foundation of his modest store in Fordsburg, Johannesburg, the beginning of the family fortune.
The business was expanded by Osman, Alibhai’s son, to the extent the family now live comfortably in Sandton. And it is still going, carried on by the enthusiasm of Osman’s elder daughter, Tzarina, who has many ideas for the expansion of The House of Burfee.
The younger sister, Jaynab, has done what Tzarina hasn’t, and has secured a husband, but has produced no children yet, a fact the sisters’ mother never tires of pointing out.
Having Tzarina take over the business reins is a break with tradition, but Osman has no sons and, besides, can recognise his daughter’s expertise and zeal.
And now a former boyfriend of Tzarina’s, the one who broke her heart as a student 10 years ago, has set up a business meeting with her. He is based in Dubai where he has a client who wants to open a franchised branch of House of Burfee.
This is exciting, but Tzarina is playing it cool. She will consult her father, and do the due diligence. More importantly, she thinks, she needs to make sure her past isn’t on a collision course with her future.
And something is definitely brewing, because the cover blurb tells us that a family secret is about to surface which will test Osman’s relationship with his daughters.
Author Shafinaaz Hassim is an award-winning writer and sociologist who has written several novels as well as other publications. In 2014 she was listed by Unesco as one of the top 39 writers in sub-Saharan authors under 40. She divides her time between Polokwane and Durban.
Curro – The art of creating true wealth, by Chris van der Merwe, with Elmari Rautenbach (Tafelberg/ Jonathan Ball Publishers)
Dr Chris van der Merwe is, with colleagues, the founder of the Curro schools and Stadio Holdings, a JSE-listed higher education company. And he admits he is “what you might call a wealthy man”. But he adds true wealth is about much more than just money.
He also points out that in a world fascinated by instant success, it has taken him almost 35 years to accumulate what he has today.
When he started Curro, he says in his foreword, he had never read a book like the one he has written. “If I had read one, I would have stressed less and been better prepared for a wider range of situations.”
He adds that the purpose of the book is to get young entrepreneurs “to understand my mindset and my experiences of both the highs and the lows”.
The book is divided into two parts – first his life story and second his definition of true wealth and, based on personal experience, his advice on how to achieve it.
He describes how, in October 2016, he was drinking his morning coffee when the CEO of the largest shareholder in Curro Holdings rang him.
“Congratulations on Curro’s market value this morning. A market cap of R20billion – that’s remarkable.”
Van der Merwe’s coffee cup froze in his hand. He mused: “What, R20billion? But not so long ago I was a primary school teacher.”
Van der Merwe’s father died when he was three, and his mother brought his sister and him up in Goodwood, Cape Town, on a pension of R94 a month.
As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The Tipping Point, every successful person needs a mentor and 10 000 hours of practice. Van der Merwe’s first mentor was his matric history teacher who, he says, altered the direction of his life. He taught young Christie the importance of planning every hour of the day, of a step-by-step approach to work and the importance of looking back on your completed steps, and reminding him of the difficulties he had dealt with and what he had achieved.
Then there were the 10 000 hours of teaching, founding a small private school, and solving the myriad problems that came with all that.
This looks like a useful guide to entrepreneurship and success in accumulating wealth, of both financial and personal value, and it is instructive that the writer is not some amazing whiz kid who started life waving a silver spoon but a humble primary school teacher. There is always hope.