When Saul Klein, Managing Partner of LocalGlobe, suggests I meet someone, I never refuse because I always know it will be worthwhile, and, as expected, the meeting he set up when I was in Cape Town on my annual pilgrimage home was inspiring and brilliant.
At the foot of the majestic Table Mountain, in the suburb of Oranjezicht, I met with the legend that is Sheryl Ozinsky and her partner, Caz Friedmann.
Founded in 2012, Oranjezicht City Farm (OZCF) began as a small community food garden, promoting local food, culture, and community through urban agriculture. Over the years, they developed educational programmes and sustainable farming practices and Sheryl, together with a few volunteers, started a small market to sell the vegetables that they grew.
Sheryl says she helped to start the project after she and Caz were attacked in their home in Oranjezicht. “At that moment, I realised my life was about to change,” she says. “I began asking a lot of questions like, who works with the police service, who keeps a record of crime in the area, who looks after community spaces? The answer was no-one does.”
After the incident, Sheryl helped to establish a neighbourhood watch, whose work helped make the community safer, more walkable and more liveable. But she realised that safety alone wouldn’t build community, and that there needed to be something more tangible that brought people together. So, on the spot of two neglected bowling greens – which originally functioned as a farm producing fruits and vegetables for the burgeoning city – she and other volunteers established the Oranjezicht City Farm.
While the soil took its sweet organic time to support growth, Sheryl employed farmers to help, who, in turn, started to sell their fresh organic produce from stalls, while the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and artisanal bread coaxed people in by the nose. “Our food system is broken,” she says. “We’ve compromised on flavour in our rush for profits, we use too many chemicals and a long cold chain impacts on nutritional content. We set out to hunt down the freshest and the best.”
Every Friday, a tent would go up near the green, and every Saturday evening it would come down. And then the tent took off in a howling South Easter, wrenching out anchored guy ropes and effectively demolishing a heritage wall on the site. There was no get-out-of-jail small-print clause in a contract that would save the market. No print at all. The City’s informal wave and nod turned rapidly into a firm head shake.
“We’ve compromised on flavour in our rush for profits, we use too many chemicals and a long cold chain impacts on nutritional content. We set out to hunt down the freshest and the best.”
The market found a temporary home for seven months at the Premier’s residence, Leeuwenhof, and was dubbed ‘Zilla Villa’. The Premier helped park cars on the lawn and liked to shop for her fresh greens. Security was unhappy. Sheryl also began to feel that the market should really live in a politically neutral zone.
So, she circled back to her old stomping ground, the V&A Waterfront, for a new venue and with a nod from CEO David Green, found only one space. It was filled with concrete blocks, rusted old skips and dumpsters. No buildings, no water source and no fences.
“We’ll take it,” she told him.
But Capetonians can be territorial. There are famous North-South divides, Sea Point versus city bowl divisions, above railway lines, below railway lines distinctions that divide and demarcate. Mess with that and there are grumbles, pursed lips. Until they smell the coffee – and the bread.
Now, the market now offers everything from fish and meat, to cheese and fruit and vegetables, and it is home to over 100 traders and approximately 3,500 people make their living there. Initially the market was only open on Saturdays, but that has now expanded to Sundays, as well as a night market on Wednesday, which will see around 5,000 to 6,000 people attend.
“We are an experiential retail destination – nothing will just sit on a shelf, there’ll be a story behind everything,” says Sheryl.
Whether a destination for a weekly grocery shop, or somewhere to buy a coffee, for Sheryl it is all about quality, community and supporting entrepreneurs that work hard. She tells me: “You can get food that is as good as any restaurant out there, and it all comes from within two to three hours away – no imports here.
“We love to work with entrepreneurs, making sure we are facilitating and helping them to grow their enterprises.”
Sheryl has always been driven by community and people. Initially a marine biologist, she started organising programmes and concerts at the Natural History Museum in Cape Town, which was outside the scope of her employment which was to classify molluscs in the marine biology department. She explains: “We raised money and made the museum into a place that people loved and enjoyed, and when they were there, they learnt about the animal kingdom and the floral kingdom.
“It made me realise that you cannot preach conservation until you instil a love of the natural world into young people. If they love it, they’ll protect it, but you have to find ways to translate what they see to capture the imagination.”
“We are an experiential retail destination – nothing will just sit on a shelf, there’ll be a story behind everything.”
The same ethos applies at Oranjezicht City Farm where the goal is to make fresh, nutritious, local food accessible. “We don’t stock fruit and veg out of season because it not only has incredible flavour at its peak, but it’s also going to be packed with nutritional benefits.”
To build on this, Sheryl tells me they’d like to start a non-profit farmers market coalition. “We would help others to start their own farmers markets, because we understand how amazing they are, not only for organic farmers to supply into, but also as a place to create employment opportunities. They are also spaces for people to connect with each other, with farmers and producers and to understand where their food comes from. Our aim is to try to help repair a food system that is broken.”
When I asked Sheryl what she sees for the future, she tells me that she’d love to grow the brand. “I would like to have similar markets in other parts of South Africa, maybe even in other parts of the world.
“It would be amazing for us to take this concept and all the lessons we’ve learnt and roll it out more widely – mentor people to help them achieve the same amount of joy that we have found here. I’d like to see 100 markets all over the city, where everyone can shop for healthy food.”
The original farm – which still grows produce to this day – and the ever-growing market is a true labour of love for Sheryl, and it was pleasure to sit down with her and learn all about the wonderful work they are doing in Oranjezicht and the community they are continuing to build.
Quickfire questions
Where were you born? In Cape Town, on 1 January 1960 at midday. Can it get any better than that?
Family? When I met Caz, my partner, my life changed. I found happiness and purpose. We’ve been together for 24 years now.
Who has been your biggest inspiration? My grandmother, Bertha Epstein. She arrived here from Russia as a young woman with a child and she couldn’t speak the language. She worked a printing machine with her foot and she would still get up every day very early and make us all breakfast, look after us and cook for the family whilst telling us stories about Russia to inspire us.
What would you like your legacy to be? If I can leave the Oranjezicht market as an experiential retail attraction for Cape Town and grow it from strength to strength, then I will have done my job. I think leaders are people who leave things behind after they are long gone so that’s what I hope to do.
