Kuhle! Zulu for: “It is lovely!” These are our crafts and this is our story. We are people of the Southern Drakensberg and we are changing our lives by creating new and beautiful things.

Until recently we worked in isolation with little or no interaction with other crafters and rarely placed our crafts with local craft outlets. We used them in our homes, we traded them within our communities and sometimes we sold them to passing visitors.

Because of our limited access to materials our crafts developed from things we could find in and around our communities, grasses from the mountain sides, clay from the river bed, left over paper, plastic and wood and on occasion beads. From these basic materials we developed our own designs.

In all this time we gained little for our efforts and our lives changed not at all. But now everything is changing. Through a community based development programme supported by a grant from Gijima (The European Union) our crafts have become a catalyst for change in our lives and in our communities.

From our 14 craft groups scattered around the KwaSani region, 26 of our over 200 members have been chosen to gather together to share ideas, learn new techniques, develop quality standards and designs and to secure new materials and a market for our products. What you see on these pages is a result of this process. What you don't see are the changes in our lives.

Today we are Kuhle, we are one brand, hands linked by common interest and purpose. We draw materials from as far away as Europe and Madagascar and our crafts travel beyond our hills to the homes of people in places we have never seen, but they have seen us through our work and it is Kuhle……….it is lovely.