Just over 10 years ago, after she lost her husband, Nophelo Zenani was so impoverished that she and her five children would sometimes go to bed without any food.

“When we didn’t have anything to eat we would just drink water and I would pray so hard for a miracle. As a parent, not providing for your kids is one of worst experiences. Somehow you feel responsible … that you failed them,” she said.

But today the 54-year-old says she and her family are not merely surviving, but thriving – thanks to a farming programme that this Khayelitsha grandmother has been part of for the past 11 years. It has, she says, made her life “liveable following years of dire poverty”...