THE ECOLOGY OF RURAL HABITAT

Franco Frescura

INTRODUCTION

The creation of an indigenous architecture in southern Africa has always been part of a larger process whereby both the individual dwelling unit and the larger homestead or village derive their existence from the found and natural materials of the physical environment. They use their immediate surrounds as a ready quarry for the timber, the stones, the clay and the grass required for their construction.

Theirs therefore is a highly functional kind of architecture which uses materials according to their natural properties. As a result the form of dwellings, the size of settlements and even the resolution of certain structural details, such as the roof apex, have all been subjected to different environmental forces leading to certain regions developing strong architectural identities in their own right. In spite of these outward differences however, all rural architecture is linked by the fact that this habitat is part of a delicate environmental balance which brings together human settlement, economic activity, physical environment and culture into one larger interacting whole. Thus if one of vernacular architecture's attractions lies in its seeming ability to merge with immediate surrounds, that is because it draws upon its social and physical environs for its very being.

THE ECOLOGY OF THE DWELLING UNIT

Traditionally the dwellings of rural southern Africa have been built predominantly out of saplings, timber, clay, grass and cow dung. Depending on the region, stone rubble and shales have also been used in wall construction while natural lime has been found to be a good soil stabiliser. However, being natural materials, these have also tended to provide a home to a variety of insects, lizards and other small fauna which can subsist alongside, or even in spite of, man. This has led to the rural dwelling developing an internal ecological balance of its own, with man and his activities on the one hand, providing a check to the infestation of his environment on the other. Thus it was found, during the course of current research, that when rural residents built fires in their dwellings for both heating and cooking, their smoke rose and percolated through the thatch grass roof thus effectively fumigating it and discouraging vermin infestation.

To a certain extent this process must also be assumed to be effective where clay walls are concerned. Therefore, should a family decide, for any reason, to change their grass roof and replace it with zinc sheeting, they will no longer be able to build an effective fire within it without the assistance of a smoke flue. As in the majority of cases the flue has not found popular application in the region's architecture, it is likely that this group would soon cease to build internal fires in their dwelling thus terminating the fumigating process. One probable result of this action will be that they will need to introduce cement and brick into the structure in order to reduce or eliminate infestation of the walls. Once a family initiates the use of cement, it is also likely to cut down on its maintenance efforts by using this material in the floor. However cement floors are hard and cold to sleep on and therefore European- style furniture will have to be bought to replace traditional grass sleeping mats. By implication then, such a family will be making a transition from a local subsistence and craft- manufacturing economy to an externally based cash-using society. However, in view of the fact that industrially manufactured furniture is normally based upon a 90°geometry and that circular floor plans are thus difficult to furnish, a change in fittings might also bring about a change in the dwelling's floor plan from the circular to the square, thus also forcing a change in its roof technology.

It is obviously highly unlikely that any individual rural family will ever undergo such a methodical step-by-step evolution in their life-style and economic status. Indeed this entire chain of events was built up from the information obtained from various disparate and unrelated sources. Thus the breakdown in traditional values described here need not necessarily begin at the cessation of the fumigation process. The purchase of furniture would often be of sufficient stimulus to bring about a change in the dwelling's floor plan while in other recorded cases the cycle was broken when the family, tired of the constant maintenance work required on the floor, replaced it with cement. The old practice of recoating clay floors is necessary, for whilst the walls and roof may be successfully maintained by fumigation and an occasional re-plastering, the former needs to be resurfaced regularly every seven to ten days or, at the most, within a fortnight. The material used is normally a mixture of clay and cow dung which produces a warm, yielding and clean surface suitable for laying sleeping mats on and, because of its ammonia content, it also acts as a disinfecting agent.

A final factor which requires consideration is the role played by the vernacular dwelling within the larger environmental cycle of rural birth, life and death. Generally speaking we find that the rural builder draws upon the natural environment for his raw materials. These are given validity within the structure but, once their function ceases, the dwelling is allowed to decay and, with time, its elements return to their primary state. This means that certain materials, mainly soil, are not lost to the community but remain as part of its common wealth. However recent efforts to produce cheaper and more permanent rural housing by the introduction of a soil stabilising technology could easily interfere with this natural process, and its indiscriminate use could also bring about the creation of large quantities of equally permanent rubble.

THE ECOLOGY OF THE SETTLEMENT

The ecological balance achieved between the larger settlement of rural man and nature is somewhat more complex, being influenced by such factors as social custom, land ownership rights and traditional agrarian practices. For the purposes of this article it is proposed to give only a brief resume of the issues involved.

In the past, when the rural dweller considered the site for his new homestead, his choice was influenced by a number of factors. Primarily these had to do with the availability of resources such as potable water and building materials but other elements such as ground slope, drainage, orientation and aspect were also important. Historically too, elevation and defense were also considered, but these have tended to be ignored in more recent times.

Perhaps the most critical of all these factors, however, was the availability of agricultural land in the immediate vicinity of the settlement. The rural homestead was part of a self-sustaining economy which relied upon the fruits of the soil as the major source for its food. Although farmers were also pastoralists, cattle were regarded primarily as a source of wealth to be used for the purpose of obtaining brides for the family unit. The usufruct of cattle was limited to the provision of milk on a daily basis, but even so cattle were not bred for their milk-producing capacity. In fact very little deliberate cattle breeding appears to have occurred. When the slaughter of an animal did take place, this was usually for ritual purposes, and then the whole community took part in the meal and no attempt was made at storage of the meat.

Traditional agricultural activity could be said to have been distributed across four major fields:

  1. Grazing land which fell into two areas of seasonal activity: summer and winter grazing. The former was usually close at hand to the settlement whilst the latter could have been at a distance of several days or even weeks of travel from it. This gave summer grazing the opportunity of recovering for the new season.
  2. Sandy soil planting land.
  3. Loam soil planting land.
  4. Clay soil planting land.

Families were usually allocated planting lands in all three soil zones. This meant that not only was it possible to plant a variety of crops, some vegetables being more suitable to one kind of soil than others, but this acted as a form of insurance against the vagaries of the weather. Generally loam soils were considered to give a good crop in an average year; sandy soil crops prospered in wet seasons when the over-wet clay would have allowed the seed to rot; and clay soil crops fared well in the drier years when the clay retained moisture better than the well-drained soils. A family's planting lands could be anything up to 40km from each other, which meant that during the harvest, temporary villages would grow up alongside their fields.

However, since 1913 and the first of the Land Acts which established the so-called "Native Reserves", the whole pattern of rural agriculture has changed radically. Lack of suitable pastorage has increased rural poverty whilst the rising population within the confines of the relatively small rural areas set aside for black occupation has led to the impoverishment of planting land and the loss of large tracts of former fertile fields. Also, the availability of a transport infrastructure gave competing white farmers an unfair advantage in getting their produce to markets and many black peasant farmers could not remain economically viable under these circumstances. Thus any discussion on the links between human settlement and agricultural land should be read in a historical context and not as a reflection of current conditions.

In the process a new factor has emerged in the question of rural settlement: that of rural overpopulation. Pictorial records of the Zululand countryside just over a century ago show a landscape littered with small homesteads. Their location however, far from being haphazard, appears to be subject to some form of rule-of-thumb distancing. Aerial photographs of the remains of eighteenth century settlement areas on the Transvaal and OFS highveld also show a similar grouping of family units. Both would appear to indicate the existence of what Robert Ardrey has called a "territorial imperative" in human settlement. The establishment of such an imperative is conditioned by the natural resources which a settlement needs to control in order to survive as a rural production unit. This means that the amount of land required cannot be easily quantified and may change from region to region and from economy to economy. It may also vary in the history of a settlement as the size of its population fluctuates and grows.

A rural production unit also tends to generate a certain amount of wastes, partly natural, partly manufactured, which are absorbed and processed by nature. Those discarded on the midden, for example, are incorporated into the rural cycle of life where some farm animals contribute to the removal of food scraps and others, like cattle and donkeys, roll in the spent hearth ashes as a means of controlling ticks. Human wastes, on the other hand, are scattered further afield to decompose organically and become absorbed into the soil.

In more recent times we have seen the rise in southern Africa of large scale rural, semi-urban settlements in such places as Acornhoek, Bushbuckridge, Melelane, Thaba 'Nchu, Winterveld and Dennilton to name but a few. These towns are endowed with few social amenities and virtually no supporting physical infrastructure. In such areas many of the traditional concepts of "homestead" have fallen by the wayside and the control of land for agricultural purposes has been overtaken by a need for residential space. Also the competition for building resources has forced rural builders into using modified rural technologies in order to provide themselves with housing of an acceptable standard. Despite the lack of fresh water and waste removal facilities they have generally met with a remarkably high degree of success. However in some areas population densities have reached such concentrations that natural processes have been unable to keep up with the inflow of waste materials. This has often resulted in the pollution of water resources. The outbreaks of cholera experienced in the central and western Transvaal during the summer of 1981-1982 must be attributed directly to the overburdening of rural land by human settlements living in near-urban densities but under rural conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

In spite of the fact that South Africa has now accepted that significant economic and political changes will have to be wrought in our society in order to meet the aspirations of all our citizens, to date most action has focused upon the urban areas. As a result there has been a tendency to overlook important developments taking place in our rural areas. This is shortsighted, not only because 50% of our national population resides in the country, but also because the quality of life in rural areas is subject to delicate balances which, if broken, may not be rectified by an expensive extension of urban infrastructures. As a result many a rural resident, faced with the prospect of hardship, has opted for a life in the city where, at least, he may enjoy higher standards of living. Thus a breakdown in rural conditions may be seen as a major contributory factor to the problems of growing urbanisation. If these are to be tackled at root source then the resolution of rural difficulties must stand high on our agenda of national priorities.

POSTSCRIPT

This paper appeared in Conserva (Vol 5, no 1, January 1990. 6-7, 220 under the title of The Ecology of Rural Habitat.

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