Life in the communities

I attended my first community meeting today. In order to be able to interview children in schools and in the communities, we need to raise awareness about the project and its aims as to avoid rumours such as “Young Carers Project South Africa are Satanists and are trying to steal our children”.

At every community meeting, men and women sit separately in a large circle outside in a field or as today, in a schoolyard. As with every other meeting, there is an agenda and someone takes minutes. We were the first to present, after the welcoming words and the opening prayer (more about religion in another post).  Everything was presented in Tsonga, the local language, people asked questions and we then returned to our chairs. As it would have been rude to leave early we sat in the sun, ants climbing up my bare legs (yes, I was required to wear a skirt!) with colleague and translator Thembi who was enthusiastically participating in the meeting rather than concentrating on translation. Jebo!

Among other things, the local community was complaining about long transport routes for secondary schools (ca. 20 min by taxi), a clinic (ca. 30min by taxi) and to the local hospital (ca. 45 min by taxi). Obviously with a taxi fare of at least R10 (ca. 1GBP) per transport and a daily income of less than 5GBP per day the local community needs to walk everywhere.

In addition, the ANC (African National Congress – party in government) seemed to have cheated at the last community elections on May 18^th. Instead of the usual ballot which shows the picture of a candidate as well as his/her party they used one which only showed the party name and no candidate name or picture. They also spread rumours that pensioners would lose their pension if they did not vote for the ANC. As these communities are not very literate, people voted for ANC not knowing they were electing a female ward councillor who is a drunkard and gets naked in the shebeen every night and dances on the tables.  The community feels she would not represent their community very well and I did get the point when I met the lady after the meeting and she was struggling to stand up straight.

Finishing off with a closing prayer I was left to meet village elders and practice my Shangaan which got quite a few laughs.

On a different and sad note, Ma Sisulu, Walter Sisulu's wife and an icon of the South African anti-apartheid movement died yesterday.