As Afrikaans-speaking people moved to the urban areas, and as farming became more specialised, so their use of opuntia waned. The number of poor white people in the rural areas declined as did interest in prickly pear amongst wealthier livestock farmers. The eradication campaigns soured opinions of the wild plant, which was increasingly seen as a weed and pest. Yet spineless cactus was still planted on some farms and the memory of prickly pear did not entirely fade away, nor did the skills in processing it. In 2005 and 2006 we attended two events which showed considerable awareness, and even curiosity, about opuntia among different constituencies. One occasion was the Uitenhage prickly pear festival and the other an international scientific conference in Bloemfontein.

The Uitenhage festival was launched in 1987, initially growing from local interest in Afrikaner heritage. It preceded the major Afrikaans-language arts festival, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn (established in 1995). The latter had ambitions to be a national cultural event, and its organisers distanced it from the old idea of a politically construed ‘volksfees’. They saw it as part of a new South Africa and a means to help forge a broader, Afrikaans-language cultural nexus that would rid Afrikaans of some of its political baggage. Uitenhage started as a local event, with more modest ambitions. During a time of rapid social change and increasing wealth for most Afrikaners, Danelle van Zyl has argued that some looked back with nostalgia to farm-based and rural activities. Uitenhage was not specifically focussed on opuntia, but it drew on the plant as one, sometime humorous, element in local cultural expression and identity.

While the festival largely functioned as a cultural event, the conference was scientific and academic. South African participants were largely Afrikaner in origin and there was clearly some sense of maintaining an earlier tradition of scientific and popular interest. Many of the papers had a direct bearing on expanding commercial cactus pear production. With the exception of our paper (a draft for Chapter 1 in this book) and a few on North-East Africa, conference presentations focussed on spineless cactus.