GROOTFONTEIN'S REVIVED ROLE

Gerhard de Kock started work at Grootfontein agricultural college and research station in 1957 and he stayed for four decades. When we interviewed him in 2006, he was still living in Middelburg, the nearby Karoo town. Despite being retired, old and immobile, he had until recently driven regularly to Fort Hare to teach in the university's agriculture department. We talked on the stoep of his unostentatious bungalow in the bright, autumn Karoo sunlight. His ideas still lived with him. De Kock had experimented over a long period on finding the best spineless cactus plant for South African conditions and he remained fascinated by the history of opuntia. After he joined government service, he went to Stellenbosch to complete a Master's in plant breeding. When he came to Grootfontein there were only remnants of the great orchards of Thornton's day (Chapter 4), but seed samples of all of the varieties grown in earlier years were preserved. De Kock recalled that, ‘interest had been lost, the cactus was seen as dangerous’. Agricultural experts tended to see ‘no good in prickly pear’. It was ‘the plant of the poor, a flag of misery’, inconsistent with progress. When de Kock started to research opuntia again as one of the droughtresistant fodder crops suitable for South Africa, his colleagues ‘thought I was mad’. He became an expert not only in prickly pear breeding but also in prickly pear brandy. His persistence gradually enthused others and had long-term outcomes.

Despite the eradication campaign, it is clear from the previous chapter that prickly pear survived and was widely used in subsequent decades. This chapter examines the scientific and official approach to the plant from the 1960s. We argue that there is a striking change in the views of some of the key specialists involved. Up to the 1970s, scientific work on prickly pear largely concentrated on its eradication. Entomologists were the leading figures in this quest because of the centrality of the biological campaign. The Department of Agriculture was also increasingly committed to poison dispensed by its weed inspectors.