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How a Northern Cape village turned an alien tree into superfood coffee

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People wait to sell their seedpods to Brandt Coetzee, a 57-year-old Afrikaner who invented Manna Brew, a caffeine-free coffee substitute made from roasted beans. (Nick Dall/Al Jazeera)
People wait to sell their seedpods to Brandt Coetzee, a 57-year-old Afrikaner who invented Manna Brew, a caffeine-free coffee substitute made from roasted beans. (Nick Dall/Al Jazeera)

It's 07:30 on a Monday and there's already a queue of about 40 men, women and children against the wall of a still-locked warehouse. March temperatures in the South African backwater town of Calvinia, some 430km north of Cape Town, average 30°C – but today an unseasonably cold front has everyone huddling together to keep warm. Wispy grey clouds blanket the usually sunbaked Hantam Mountains and an empty chip packet skids past the police station across the road.

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