Selina Pinky Hlabedi is in the fields early, inspecting the maize’s moisture to see if it’s ready for harvest. “This period, June to July, I must harvest, so I’m here checking,” she tells Lindiwe Sithole presenter of African Farming. And with this, Hlabedi demonstrated the kind of dedication that has made her a success. Sithole visited Hlabedi during the first episode of the second season of the show that airs on Mzansi Wethu (channel 163 DStv).

Before establishing Ba Kwa-Hlabedi Farming in Gauteng, Hlabedi worked for some high-profile people such as former police commissioner George Fivaz. But she left politics and public service to serve South Africa in a different way. She now contributes to food security.

Hlabedi has a formidable list of accomplishments in agriculture, including spending time in the USA studying farming practises. However, it was the cattle and maize on Hlabedi nearly 500-hectare farm that Sithole was interested in. There is a herd of 36 cattle, comprising Bonsmaras and Simbras. She also grows maize and some vegetables. Recently she started planting and bailing her own feed for her cattle.
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Sithole asked Hlabedi about future diversification and Hlabedi admitted it is extremely important to her. She said she might even bring back commodities she farmed with in the past, such as sheep.

“I am also considering expanding vegetable production so that we are able to package it and supply to retailers,” she said.

But with growth in any farming operations comes growth in mechanisation. Therefore, Sithole asked Cobus du Toit, John Deere Export Sales Manager and member of the expert panel on African Farming, how mechanisation can contribute to Hlabedi’s success in the future.

“With mechanisation timing and planning is crucial, so you need proper mechanisation partners,” said Du Toit.
“The solution for Pinky is in the feed-making process. She’s got primary tillage; she’s got planting and also harvesting. She can use that same equipment to create feed for her feedlot or animals.”

He stressed again the importance of timing. Du Toit explained that should you need to cut the feed, it has to be at the right protein levels. Or if you are planning to bail or forage you need to be there at the right time.

“That is why it is important that you select the correct partner in that mechanisation space,” he said.

“And then of course you must also have the right business partner, someone who can inform and assist you when needed.”

When it comes to partners, a farmer won’t find a better one than John Deere. This company has been conducting business in South Africa for the past 50 years. In 2013 they opened a R150-million state-of-the-art parts warehouse in Johannesburg. The facility serves more than 50 John Deere dealers countrywide.

For information: Contact your nearest John Deere dealer, or John Deere’s office at 0080 098 3821, email: africa@johndeere.com or visit, www.deere.com/sub-saharan/en.

Is there a difficult person in your life whom you do not have the option to walk away from? While I do not promise that these steps will magically transform your relationship, I do know that you will achieve an empowered perspective by following them.

By Oma Edoja (Photo Shutterstock.com)

I was having a difficult time at work with someone I needed to work closely with.
I was the new girl. She was the established long-timer who had earned her respect. It appeared that to Ms. H, nothing I did was ever right. She constantly blurted out snide remarks about me and went behind my back to undo things I had done. We had at least one year to work together. I desperately needed to make this relationship work.

A trusted friend advised that Ms. H was a perfectionist and so I needed to bring my A game to the table. This brought very little comfort. I was already working myself sick over this job. However, I was determined to turn things around for the success of my career.
Over the next few weeks, I became more proactive. I completed tasks before they were due. I kept all paperwork up to date. I made sure that Ms. H had everything she needed to enable us to work together. During this time, I learned more about her. I learned that she bloomed with recognition and validation. In fact, she craved it. I decided to put some age-old wisdom to work: give people what they want to get what you need. I verbally acknowledged Ms. H’s skills. I asked her for help when I needed it. I made her shine before others on the team. I smiled wider, greeting her louder as I came in each morning. Before long, Ms. H was smiling wider and greeting louder too. She began saying my name in conversations with me whereas before, she had never bothered. The first day she tapped my arm as she spoke to me, I squealed inside, “It’s working, it’s working!”. By feeding her need for recognition and validation, I was gradually winning Ms. H over.

Most of us will at some point encounter difficult people we cannot do without. It is African culture to try to make relationships work rather than discard them at the first signs of difficulty. Indeed, difficult people are hard to deal with. The easiest reaction is to avoid them. But there are some you just have to get along with, to get what you want or to get where you are going. You do not want sparks flying every time you encounter them and you do not want them running roughshod all over you.

This is when I recommend finding and filling their emotional cup.

We all have one. Some of us are able to fill our own – by encouraging or validating ourselves, seeking the help or companionship of others, reading an inspirational book or engaging in spiritual exercise. People who proactively fill their own emotional cups tend to be happy, confident and resilient.
Then, we have those whose emotional cups are empty, whose emotional needs are unmet, who are unaware of their unmet needs or who have no idea how to fill them. These tend to be people in turmoil. They could present as needy and clingy or as demanding and domineering. If we can find and fill the emotional cups of the difficult people in our lives, those we cannot get away from and whom we just have to get along with, we have a better chance of a positive relationship with them.

7 keys to building positive relationships with the difficult people in our lives

1. Know who you are
   If someone is being difficult, they are the ones with the problem. You are separate from the situation and not defined by it. By keeping calm and in control, you hold the power to bring about the solution. I decided not to react to the snide remarks and sabotage, instead discussing things with a trusted colleague who helped me navigate forward. Instead of allowing the situation to get me down, I worked on keeping my cup full.
2. Filling your own cup
   Surround yourself with uplifting influences; take stock of your achievements and celebrate them; pursue personal goals; follow a passion and connect with others who share it; make time to do the things you enjoy; enjoy family and friends; enjoy your own company; volunteer to help the less fortunate; engage in spiritually uplifting exercise; celebrate your own life, daily. These activities kept me self-charging through all the denigration. My opinion of me did not change with the negativity. I built up inner riches; I had more value to give.
3. Do the necessary
   Do whatever it takes to build a positive relationship. At work, be professional and competent; in your marriage, or with a family member, invest quality time. Seek help from a professional counsellor or a trusted elder. Play your part and do not be found wanting. After a while, Ms H. had no more credible complaints. Instead, I began to earn her respect. Respect and negativity cannot coexist.

• Set targets and limits
  What are you aiming for? Set clear targets or else difficult people will keep you jumping through endless hoops. I wanted a positive relationship for better productivity and enjoyment of my work. However, I was not going to keep jumping through hoops to please Ms. H. If after all my efforts there had been no change, I would have discussed my concerns with a more senior member of staff.
• Build rapport
  Find something you agree on, an aspect of work you both enjoy, a passion or interest you share; begin conversation about it. Pay them attention as you converse, making eye contact, listening, building rapport. With rapport, people open up. When they open up, you can discover their emotional needs.
• Find the need and make regular contributions
  Are they critical of others because they are critical of themselves? Is the passive aggression a plaster hiding insecurity?  I discovered that Ms. H had personal troubles which threatened her confidence. By paying her compliments and making her shine, her need for recognition and validation was being filled.
• Wean them off the attention
  Let us bring this back into perspective. I was not taking on the lifetime role of ego massager to Ms. H. I was trying to build a positive relationship to support my career goals. Once our relationship improved, I kept up the professional competency but replaced the intensive care with the everyday things we do to keep relationships going. To this day, things have stayed positive and I am enjoying my job.

By daily filling your own cup, you can develop self-assurance and resilience. By taking stock of who you are, you can separate yourself from trying situations and become the solution.

Social issues and crises tend to affect women more severely than men. This is why terms like “gender mainstreaming policies”, “gender-responsive interventions” and “gender-based budgeting” have become more popular in public policy discussions in recent years, writes Odile Mackett

The case has been made for the need to include gender in every analysis of social policy. But many of the toolkits which have been designed to do so have come up short. This is for a variety of reasons. Some of these shortcomings include a singular focus on women rather than relations between men and women; a focus on policy outcomes without a change in policy processes; and the inclusion of aspirational gender equality goals rather than goals for practical implementation.

But a framework developed by retired economics professor Marilyn Power offers a practical solution. Her framework can be used to evaluate the effects an event is likely to have on women. It can be applied to policies too. It draws together common aspects applied in gender studies and includes accounting for caring and domestic labour, considering human well-being, human agency, making ethical judgements, and undertaking an intersectional analysis.

I have used Power’s framework to examine the impact of COVID-19 on South African women. My research found that many of the challenges women experienced had been made worse by the pandemic. This was mainly as a result of the slowdown in economic activity and the restrictions on movement. These made women particularly vulnerable to physical abuse, a loss of income, and a decline in mental and emotional well-being, among others.

How women were affected

Household circumstances: The framework states that household circumstances should be considered in addition to individual circumstances. Household circumstances are vital when studying women because they tend to be the primary caregivers in the home, the number of female-headed households has grown, and they perform the bulk of domestic or household labour.

The importance of looking at both household and individual circumstances becomes clear when one looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The closure of schools and early childhood development centres meant that women experienced an increase in their domestic responsibilities. Evidence shows that far more women than men reported increased time spent on childcare during the first few months of the hard lockdown.

Human well-being and agency: The pandemic affected both the well-being and agency of women.

Human well-being has been defined as “what people are able to be and do”. Amartya Sen, an award-winning economist, has recommended the use of five instrumental freedoms to measure well-being. These list aspects which define an individual’s relationship to their communities or the state. They include political freedoms, economic freedoms, social freedoms, transparency guarantees and protective security.

These freedoms include, for instance, having enough assets, the right to live a life of dignity, and the peace of mind which goes with feeling safe in one’s community.

Agency, on the other hand, has been defined by political analyst and feminist Lois McNay as “the capacity of a person (or other living and material entities) to intervene in the world in a manner that is deemed … to be independent or relatively autonomous”. Thus, the more freedoms individuals are guaranteed in society, the more their human agency will be enhanced.

During the pandemic women were more likely to lose their jobs than men. This loss had a major impact on women’s economic freedoms as well as their social freedoms.

Making ethical judgements: Ethical judgements in the framework relate to traditional economic assumptions which predicate that economic analyses or policies are value and judgement free. Others have argued, however, that policies and interventions which do not explicitly deal with value judgements only serve to mask “implicit assumptions about race, class and gender”, even if unintentionally.

It is thus important to engage with value judgements to make clear what implicit assumptions underlie public policy decision making.

One example of this was the South African government’s social security response to the pandemic, which included the Social Relief of Distress grant. This grant was only made available to unemployed individuals who didn’t get any other grant or qualify for Unemployment Insurance Fund benefits. The conditions under which the unemployed could apply for this grant were stringent – and still emphasised the need to work.

The stringent conditions meant that many vulnerable individuals were excluded. These included those who might already be receiving existing grants or received remittances from family members, but who might still be living in poverty. A large percentage of these would be women.

Intersectional analysis: This requires thinking about other social identities which define women beyond just their gender, such as race, sexual orientation and class, among others. These additional social identities privilege and disadvantage women in varying ways.

Black women, for instance, would be more severely affected by the social ills which have accompanied this pandemic than any other group of women in South Africa. Separating women by race in policy analysis would thus provide useful information which would not be otherwise observed had women been studied as a homogeneous group. Similar arguments could be made for further segmenting groups according to their social identities.

Next steps

Women make up half of the South African population. It’s therefore important to consider how decisions and policies affect them. Failing to undertake a gendered analysis doesn’t equate to men and women being treated equally. Rather that women are likely to be implicitly negatively biased.

Odile Mackett, Lecturer, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Photo credit. shutterstock.com/David Fadul