What is community? Not in the dictionary and literal sense of a group of people who live together and share the same norms, religion and customs based on geographical location. What I mean is where and how do we find a shared sense of kinship, belonging and inclusion in order for us to build a society and not break each other down. Is it possible to find community with people with whom you have little else in common other than your humanity and shared sense of hope and optimism for change in our society?
“All too often we think of community in terms of being with folks like ourselves: the same class, same race, same ethnicity, same social standing and the like. I think we need to be wary: we need to work against the danger of evoking something that we don’t challenge ourselves to actually practice,” says author and activist bell hooks.
She also emphasises that “when we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away”.
I recently visited Winterveld, about 90km from Johannesburg. A rural and poor community most notably characterised by difficult, degraded and sometimes non-existent roads that make getting to your destination a little hairy, a test of how serious you are about your business there, if you will.
There I met the women of the Mapula Embroidery Project, a dedicated and hopeful cohort who have woven the embroidery project quite literally into their lives as a sort of life jacket against the poverty, unemployment and disheartening conditions around them. They also use the work to tell the stories of their community, their latest award-winning piece focusing on how environmental degradation affects poor communities.
Read in Daily Maverick: “Rural women of Winterveld sew to reap rewards of empowerment through embroidery project”
Living in South Africa, it’s quite easy to almost drown in the torrent of bad and sad news, leaving you in a constant fight between cynicism and optimism. When you find shoots of hope, such as the embroidery project, it galvanises you against the pessimism of our political failures.
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Although I was an outsider, I found a sense of welcome and community among the women, who immediately elicited in me a quote from Arthur Ashe, the tennis champion: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
Read in Daily Maverick: “While we focus on securing the wealth of Sandton, the poor in South Africa face terror attacks daily”
Amid the despair around them, they were finding purpose through the beauty of needle and fabric, showing that everyone can do something with the little they have to generate not only an income but to make a meaningful contribution to building their community.
Yes, our politicians and government are failing us and we must be angry and demand accountability; however, we are not powerless to do the little that we can to bring about positive change in our communities.
In 2016, in his Howard University commencement speech, former US president Barack Obama captured this well: “Change is the effort of committed citizens who hitch their wagons to something bigger than themselves and fight for it every single day.”
So let’s hitch ourselves to our communities in the pursuit of the change we’d like to see in our society that is bigger than our individual needs and frustrations. DM168
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.
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I hear you about cynicism and sad or bad news being challenged by community engagement that fights against the tide. But we’re not there yet, are we? Much of our cynicism comes from fashionably-suited deceivers who repeatedly sell us pie in the sky, won’t share the recipe and then leave us to starve. Suits know pies don’t last long, so they’ll be back with their fake news and short-lived goodies unless we learn to bake. Baking needs company.
I strongly believe community based action is the way out of the political & officials failures not just in ZA but across the world. Stand up in your community do something otherwise you participate in the slide. They, community & politicians will follow as they are clueless or fear to be left behind so loosing their jobs, it was never a calling but always only a survival tactic.