South Africa: Going Home Again

Going Home Again Running a marathon is challenging enough so doing one with a tree strapped on your back is understandably exhausting. Even so, South African activist and tree-grower Siyabulela Sokomani and a group of friends, ran the Cape Town Marathon on Sept. 15 with saplings rising from their backpacks. Their performance wasn’t a test of endurance but a call to promote the planting of native trees in South Africa in order to cope with drought and climate change, Reuters reported. The group is raising cash to plant 2,000 trees in Khayelitsha, one of Cape Town’s biggest townships, and get rid of the invasive trees that suck up ground water and hinder rainfall from feeding the soil and dams. Last year, Cape Town suffered its worst drought in more than a century, forcing authorities to impose water rationing and set up public water points. The US-based Nature Conservancy said in a 2018 report that 14.6 billion gallons of water could be saved within six years if non-native plants were removed and replaced with indigenous plants, Agence France-Presse reported. Many believe it’s actually a good solution: The South African succulent Spekboom is quite sustainable, growing almost anywhere, and it absorbs carbon dioxide faster than most trees in dry conditions.