Here's a riddle-me-ree: When is an avocado not an avocado? When it's also a creche, a management mentoring programme and a mobile clinic. To solve this puzzle, come with me to the town of Tzaneen. To get there, let's take a small, loud, bouncy plane from Johannesburg to Hoedspruit, a town in the Limpopo Province that welcomes visitors to the Kruger National Park. Here, we're greeted by a benchful of blokes with leatherette faces, khaki shorts and sturdy boots holding signs saying 'Cheetah Rehabilitation', 'Lion Project', and 'Monkey Sanctuary'. Luckily, there's Dorcus Molomo, too. Her sign says 'Delicious Avocados'.Dorcus drives us along arrow-straight roads, over the great Limpopo River and through the endless, thirsty veldt. Mozambique is only 80 kilometres away; Zimbabwe, a hundred. Above us, the blazing sun; left and right, game estates curly with mopane, acacia and marula trees; ahead, the Drakensberg Mountains: tremendous, mauve and hugely crumpled. Inside the Drakensberg caves are wonderful wall paintings of glossy elands, fat and fertile. For 10,000 years or more, Dorcus tells me, the eland has been associated with rain here in the Transvaal. Fittingly, the heavens now open. Rain is a mercy in these parched parts and Dorcus breaks into song in Sotho, her native language.
Dorcus Molomo is a proud citizen of the new South Africa, a nation still rubbing the grit of apartheid from its eyes. She is 40, a strong woman who speaks quietly but with conviction, and is one of the first of her generation to break into management. "You see," says Dorcus, "however hard things were, we're moving forward. You have to act according to the change you want to see... But sometimes change needs a little help." Dorcus works for the Hans Merensky group of farms, an enterprise founded by a charismatic geologist who discovered diamonds in South Africa and spent his final years devoted to the land. Merensky's legacy is a large business founded on his three passions: agriculture, forestry and nature.
It's a beautiful place, with 60,000 shiny-leaved trees - each heavy with the droops of fat, smooth-skinned Fuerte avocados.
"We grow the world's best avocados, mangoes, citrus fruit and trees for timber," she pronounces. "And now the best people, too." By now, we've reached the avocado plantation at Goedgelegen on the Westfalia Estate. It's a beautiful place, with 60,000 shiny-leaved trees - each heavy with the droops of fat, smooth-skinned Fuerte avocados. Goedgelegen is fed by a dam and is worked by a cheerful crew chattering away in Sotho, Afrikaans and Shangaan. They pick the avocados by hand, using an ingenious bag-on-a-pole arrangement for the avocados out of reach above their heads. Fresh and rich though the fruit look, we cannot eat them straight from the tree - they don't ripen until after picking. Dorcus explains how they will slowly ripen on the Avocado Train to Cape Town, and thence on a boat to the UK.
The Hans Merensky group is forward-thinking and socially inclusive; it's one of those rare businesses that didn't need to change its model to become Fairtrade-accredited. However, it remains proudest of its association with the Waitrose Foundation. This organisation gives a percentage of the price of each avocado straight back to the people who need it most. Under lowering skies, Dorcus shows how the foundation benefits the community. We visit a creche overhung with jacaranda trees; it is clean and well equipped and takes workers' kids up to five years old. An adult education programme here teaches women literacy, numeracy and computer skills and children learn English.
The village may not be flush with money, but there's no poverty of spirit here
We go to a village where Foundation avocados have built a craft centre. The women inside laugh, sing and demonstrate a tribal dance. The village may not be flush with money, but there's no poverty of spirit here. Finally, we meet Sister Anne, whose mobile clinics provide free community healthcare. HIV-Aids is a huge problem, but these clinics give free testing and antiretrovirals, plus food supplements and advice.
"Now," says Dorcus, "HIV-Aids doesn't need to be a death sentence." Here, surrounded by the chirp of birds and the happy shrieks of children, we eat a simple lunch of avocado salad and it tastes beautiful, just beautiful. "People who buy Waitrose Foundation avocados are showing they care, that they want to help," says Dorcus, softly. "That we're remembered, thought of. And that adds value to our lives." I previously thought that 'added value' meant 20 per cent extra free, so my visit to Tzaneen teaches me something new. These avocados are not just some of the silkiest you can buy, they also answer some of the wriggly questions posed by post-apartheid South Africa. Whatever the problems facing this extraordinary country, Waitrose Foundation avocados are part of the solution.