As some of you might know, I recently moved to a beautiful little town in the Groot Karoo to work on my debut novel without the demands and pressures of life in the city. I arrived a few months ago and have since fallen in love with the breathtaking splendour and small town serenity which is synonymous with large swaths of our beautiful country; but the sad underlying reality is that this old world charm is under threat and at risk of becoming just another idyllic memory of what once was.
On the one hand, there is the government and the large, multi-national oil companies who want to destroy hundreds of thousands of hectares of our natural heritage for a profit. For anyone who hasn’t heard about Fracking yet, do some research! There are lobby groups which have been formed who have committed to stopping this travesty, but a few years ago there was another lobby group committed to protecting the Bushmen on parts of this very same land who were being denied water in a move to force them to leave in order to make way for this self-same Fracking companies. That lobby group died eventually from a lack of public interest.
In many ways this tranquil little dorpie is like so many others in South Africa. There is a small white minority that owns the ‘town’ with a much larger, largely poor and unemployed ‘coloured’ or ‘black’ township close at hand where there is a easily accessible pool of cheap labour to call upon when and if necessary. The local primary school has in excess of 250 learners with just five teachers and the nearest high school is 50 kilometres away. Many of the parents have no hope and their attitude towards their children’s education is negligible either because they know that they will not be able to afford to send their kids to high school or because they are either illiterate or under-educated and have resigned themselves to the fact that their children – like themselves – will have to survive from a social grant or menial labour.
Needless to say that part of the problem lies in the legacy of the past that still lingers despite many people’s claims that we have had almost two decades to redress the situation. The fact is that it will take a lot longer to redress the effects four hundred years of imperial colonization and nationalist repression!
However, there are many examples of how the more affluent parts of a community can become involved in the upliftment of those less fortunate than themselves and especially the children and youth, but that takes a commitment from the haves that is for the most part lacking.
We still live in a world of ‘us’ and ‘them’ where poverty is still criminalized and the individuals are blamed for not taking charge of their lives. This attitude stems from a lack of understanding and empathy and in this world of self aggrandizement and instant gratification. This is not a race issue, although it would seem that it is simply because that is how we are accustomed to view our problems. It is also not especially a class issue because there are many haves who do want to get involved and make a difference, but the problem is that they are not sure what they can do so they donate money to initiatives and efforts that are more often than not someone’s attempt to create an income for themselves anyway.
So we sit with a situation where corporates and individuals see outreach as a way of giving back to communities which in essence is not a bad thing but it does however create a host of problems in the long term because neither the community nor the individual is empowered through short term interventions and without permanent long term strategies being devised and put in place, it can be argued that many well intentioned initiatives do more bad than good.
To compound the problem, most small town communities do not have motivated leaders who are beyond social-political and religious ambitions and in the end they compound the problem, escalating existing divides rather than building bridges and bringing entire communities together. And while the intellectually arrogant, so-called analysts and observers continue to ignore the larger issues, we will continue to think about and see everything in a racially convenient monochrome. The issue is much bigger than the overused and battered box of race: in my opinion the prejudices that afflict society are a much more insidious problem because we can deny our humanity for so many reasons and in so many ways. Black, white, coloured, male, female, rich, poor, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, learned, educated, stupid, ignorant…
The list goes on and so will the problems until more people begin to realize that they can make a difference; in our own lives and the lives of others. We are after all each and every one of us a part of this human race with all of its flaws and callous disregard and rampant greed and failing systems that benefit a few at the expense of the masses! Our prerogative of course is not to subscribe to the worst human traits; to at least try to be conscious and honest and altruistic and to live meaningful lives because there is after all a ‘you’ in human and if you truly believe that its not your problem, just consider the fact that the little kid at the crappy school in the township will one day grow into a teenager with an attitude and no prospects and before you know it, granny and grandpa and your daughter and your son and your wife and husband - everyone you hold dear - are raped in front of you, before you are all shot or stabbed and left for dead. So now, lock the security gate, stick your head in the sand and have no fear. And remember to enjoy your day!
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