Mellon Forum // Fishers, Foragers, and Fine Diners: Narrating Food Sovereignty and its Discontents in South Africa’s Western Cape

Fisheries offer a point of entry to the contradictions of South Africa’s Western Cape, where bustling culinary tourism coincides with hunger and stratified urban spaces. In the 1990s, the “abalone wars” crystallized tensions between neoliberal conservation policies and indigenous foodways. Traditional fishers, excluded from quotas, began “protest fishing,” but the informal market morphed into an organized crime network. Violent conflicts arose in communities such as Hawston, while Hawston’s whiter and wealthier neighbor Hermanus enjoyed a lucrative eco-tourism industry.

Focusing on coastal cities, this talk will first consider how Zakes Mda fictionalizes the “abalone wars” and satirizes fine dining in his 2005 novel The Whale Caller. The talk will then pivot to examine the popularity of “indigenous food” and foraging within contemporary restaurant and cookbook culture, considering the line between food sovereignty praxis and appropriation in the tourism economy.

Special funding for this session is provided by the Program in African Studies.

The Spring 2025 Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment is kindly sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and the following Princeton University departments and programs: African Studies, Anthropology, Art & Archaeology, Brazil LAB, Center for Collaborative History, Chadha Global India Center, Effron Center for the Study of America, English, French & Italian, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Humanities Council, PIIRS, Politics, Program in Latin American Studies, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the School of Architecture.

Mellon Forum events are free and open to the public. Lunch is provided while supplies last.