CZA fieldwork experience: James Granelli

I started fieldwork at Princess Vlei in February 2025. Characteristically of mid-summer in Cape Town: the Southeaster blew, the sun warmed the sandy shores to the touch, and the flora took on a brown hue as the winter rains became a distant memory. Conditions that don’t seem likely for life, however in amongst the wind, sand, and sticks a picture of a peopled Critical Zone has begun to emerge. One in which the species of the endangered Cape Flats Dune Strandveld and critically endangered Sand Fynbos find themselves in a myriad of multispecies entanglements, relations, and governance approaches.

Walking these shores, whose sand always finds its way home with me, I have spoken to a variety of people. This includes those who remember the vlei as it once was – surrounded by veld and sand dunes – those that make use of the fertile fishing these landscape relations offer, and those from the Princess Vlei Forum - an NPO who are attending to the need to conserve and rehabilitate the threatened and endangered species around the vlei with a focus on community custodianship. The conversations and narratives have begun to reveal relations otherwise unseen or unnoticed and the knowledge and care for a landscape that has previously been left on the periphery.

Taking a multispecies and somewhat multi-material approach, I’ve followed and attendend to those more-than-human beings and materials who call princess Vlei home. The mole hills, edible sour figs, beer bottles, bird tracks, beetles, old car windows, and flowers nestled between plastic packets. During my walks and observations, this method has reminded me to slow down. To walk with attention and not to rush into encounters, particularly with those who have the ability to fly away! As I attend to wasp nests, dragonflies, and litter, I’ve learnt that worlds reveal themselves with patience. Attending ethnographically to the more-than-human world has been a process of self-reflection, learning, and at times questioning the ways in which these methods land in a Southern-African context. Questions I am sure to tease out as my dissertation unfolds.

Exploring this space has not been without its challenges. The ever-persistent wind for one can makes interviews and note taking particularly challenging! Besides the elements, the ethnographic process is abundant with the unexpected – each field visit revealing something new, contradictory, or unsettling. Making sense of these stories and encounters is not easy and has at times been overwhelming. However, a through line of hope and determination for the repair of this landscape settles me. Hope weaves these stories together and keeps my feet in the sand.

As I begin the second half of my fieldwork, questions swirl around how we reclaim what were once declared as ‘wastelands’, the role of more-than-human relations in place-making, relations to the more-than-human that transcend the aesthetic, community custodianship, and the securities or lack thereof afforded by endemic vegetation in the critical zone. In search of some of the answers, I fill my water bottle, pack my hat, lace my shoes and continue the trail that is a ‘muddy boots’[1] ethnography of the critical zone.