Inga Qeja registered Bhayi Holdings as a business in 2015, but only started his fulltime career as a farmer five years later. This was after he lost his employment at a car dealership in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, due to challenges brought about by the COVID-19 lockdown.
He says his experience as a salesperson helped him to create partnerships and networks, and these in turn enabled him to grow his business. He adds, however, that access to finance remains a challenge for him and other farmers in a similar position.
Qeja started farming in 2020 on 1,5ha of communal land in Mbokotwana, near Tsolo in the Eastern Cape that had been granted to his mother, but
