Category: News
Mixed Feelings On Reopening Schools
Parents feel that in as far as they do not want their children to miss out on their studies, they are worried about their safety as the number of coronavirus cases continue to rise.
It is very unfortunate that the pandemic has put a stop not only on education but everything else. It is still not yet safe for children to go back to school.
Wasteland Turned Into Vegetable Garden
A community waste land that lied for many years behind shops in Palm Springs in the Vaal is being successfully put into good use to ensure food security during lockdown as it has been turned into a vegetable garden.
This piece of land used to be a home for rats for year and the community used to dump waste whenever it was not collected by the local authority. The bad odour and rats from the dumping site affected people staying close by for years but now the piece of land has been cleaned for use on something that will benefit people because they will at least have fresh food from this garden. This garden was started by an old man together with a couple of guys who were called nyaope boys because they were addicted to nyaope drug that is still terrorising young boys and girls in townships.
Today the community of Palm Springs in Section H is happy to have this vegetable garden rather than rats and what makes even the community happier is that the boys don’t steal anymore as they are now of great help to the community.
Invitation to ACT Ubumbano Learning Hubs
‘When we stop talking, we stop thinking and creating, and we allow injustice to flourish.’
ACT Ubumbano is a resource to social justice activists and organisations to reflect on their practice and deepen their capacity to be in solidarity with those who struggle for their dignity, even as the COVID-19 pandemic prevents us from being with each other.
And so we will be convening a series of digital Learning Hubs each week for the next few months. We know that solidarity action does not stop during lockdowns. Instead, social justice organisations and activists have become creative in finding new ways of accompanying those in most need in the community, and pushing back against injustice, violence and oppression. We want to talk about these initiatives.
The Learning Hubs will begin in the second week of June. The first Hub will be discussing [PACSA, CREATE and the COVID-19 Collective and their solidarity drive with communities in Pietermaritzburg – INSERT TOPIC HERE.]
There will be space for a maximum of 10 people in each facilitated session to allow for deep and reflective discussion.
ACT Ubumbano invites organisations to participate by identifying individuals from their networks to be part of these Learning Hubs. We can provide some support to organisations to cover staff time, data and airtime, and other justifiable costs associated with enhancing community capacity to participate in digital platforms. If you are interested, please submit a 1-page concept note with a brief explanation of your work, the people involved (especially fieldworkers and activists), and what support you will need to participate in the learning hubs.
ACT Ubumbano also invites you to share what have you and / or your partners done to advance social justice and raise community voice. Please let us know if you are prepared to share your work as a case study for discussion at a Learning Hub. You can contact Ashley at ashley@actubumbano.org to discuss this further. All concept notes and motivations to participate can be sent to hub@actubumbano.org
What’s Happening Around Tembisa
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Meanwhile, it is also worrying how those who are entrusted with distribution food parcels are helping themselves first before the people who are in real need of the food. This is even though we are in a situation where many people have lost their livelihoods and can no longer afford to fend themselves and their families. In Vusimuzi, the community registered to get food parcels, a list of names of people who registered was used to get food parcels.
On another note, these days, SAPS has been at the forefront ensuring that citizens adhere to rules and regulations of the lockdown. Before entry at the Tembisa police station, officers scan people to check their temperature and the officers record each person’s temperature, they have also implemented a no mask no entry principle at their premises whilst enforcing social distancing. I have witnessed the same at Spar Supermarket although they do not check temperature, but the principle of no mask no entry is enforced.
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Stampede at The Complex Undermines Efforts to Curtail the Spread of Coronavirus
Rapule Moiloa
As the month of April ended, many people are eager to access their grants and the writer witnessed many people queuing outside the gate of Palm Springs Mall for SASSA grants payment waiting to go to different shops and ATMs. However, what was worrying is the fact that for whatever reasons there was no law enforcement to maintain the rules and regulations containing the spread of COVID-19 including that of maintaining social distancing.
People pushed the gate and started running into the mall and the stampede posed challenges for the security at the mall because everyone went in
PACSA and the COVID-19 Concerned Collective
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As the way of responding to the pandemic the Pietermaritzburg Agency for Community Social Action in collaborating with CREATE from the 6th of April 2020 took an initiative to mobilize food parcels to needy families. This initiative was born out of two meetings these organisations had to analyse the situation the communities living under in presence of COVID 19. The two-organisation realised that by the time COVID 19 reaches some of these communities, they would have died of hunger or hunger related violence including gender-based violence. As the result the decision to intervene was taken and an electronic poster was circulated to our partners and the public soliciting food and cash donations. Within a week the public opened their hearts and pledged food items and cash donations. To this day we truly appreciate response we got from people in terms of donations.
From conception, the Food Drive was not about food only but to be in Solidarity with those who struggle for food and understand their struggle and being present. As part of Pietermaritzburg COVID-19 Concerned Collective, PACSA learnt more from the collective partner CREATE, about their partners beyond just being in a COVID 19 Solidarity. We have learnt a lot about person living with disability. In most cases able bodied person tend to feel sorry for people living with disability without understanding that it is their life and have fully control over they bodies. As the struggle for food continued and us being present, we opened up new pathways, as one our principle is “we create a path by walking it” and walking we ask. We didn’t wait for funding to start supporting the poor on the struggle for food and existence, we started and boom the ball was rolling.
[/av_textblock] [av_masonry_gallery ids=’1075,1072,1074,1073,1071′ caption_elements=’none’ caption_styling=” caption_display=’always’ size=’fixed masonry’ orientation=’av-orientation-square’ gap=’1px’ columns=’2′ av-medium-columns=” av-small-columns=” av-mini-columns=” items=’24’ paginate=’none’ color=” custom_bg=” overlay_fx=” animation=’active’ container_links=’active’ id=” custom_class=” av_uid=’av-k9k7n8k9′] [av_textblock size=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” font_color=” color=” id=” custom_class=” av_uid=’av-k9k7oa2c’ admin_preview_bg=”]We believe that there is no one coming to save us we must create an alternative way to respond to any situation and be innovative.
We have, since we started, assisted more 120 families that includes, informal settlement dwellers, households with no income, taxi drivers and their conductors, foreign nationals irrespective of their status, persons living with disabilities, women and child headed households and families from minorities which are from white and Indian communities. Our strategy of identifying families have worked for us, moving away from announcing publicly for all in need to come and collect. We have visited all 120 families, having conversation with them before handing over food. This strategy has informed us if the families really needed assistance and what more is need in terms of knowledge and fake news propaganda about the virus. The teams have had to decide there and then to give food or not give, including adding extra care, like adding adult nappies or sanitary towel.
Our Food drive was pulled to halt by an urgent circular by COGTA, requesting all organisation’s that are on food distribution to have permits to do so, failing which they will find themselves in conflict with the law. The team leaders braved cold morning and using permits from local municipality that were deemed illegal to go and register for food distribution. The team has 6 permits and ready to cover all needy communities of Umgungundlovu, targeting those who are at the margins.
One of many challenges we have encountered during the food distribution is that some places it’s business as usual people don’t adhere to lock down laws. Due to congestion there is no social distancing other don’t even have running water , we felt as social activists it’s unfair to ask people to wash hands while we can see that there is no water.
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COVID-19, Solidarity and Access to Justice
The COVID-19 pandemic will have a massive impact on those who have to work the hardest to defend their dignity and their humanity. The links below will take you to some of the struggles being waged by communities. We also include a list of organisations who can provide legal advice and support in this time of crisis. And some simple information slides in different languages to help raise awareness on how we can individually contribute to the fight against the virus. Government has also provided a very information website that does not use data – https://coronavirus.datafree.co/
Please take care of yourselves and let’s stand strong in solidarity with each other.
Click here to download the Access to Justice and Covid-19 resource.
A Church Land Programme Initiative to Share Resources for Our Journey
Padkos 2020 gets off to a cracking start as internationally renowned Fanon-scholar, Nigel Gibson, returns to CLP on Monday, 2nd March! Nigel’s visit comes as a result of our ongoing collaboration with the Paulo Freire Project* with whom we’re co-hosting this discussion on Frantz Fanon and a ‘politics at a distance from the state’. Get yourselves to the CLP offices on 2 March and we’ll start at 10:30am. Stay after for a light lunch too.
Padkos 2020 gets off to a cracking start as internationally-renowned Fanon-scholar, Nigel Gibson, returns to CLP on Monday, 2nd March!
Nigel’s visit comes as a result of our ongoing collaboration with the Paulo Freire Project* with whom we’re co-hosting this discussion on Frantz Fanon and a ‘politics at a distance from the state’.
Get yourselves to the CLP offices on 2 March and we’ll start at 10:30am. Stay after for a light lunch too.
CLP has worked & experimented for a long time thinking about a ‘politics at a distance from the state’, prompted by struggles that are being thought on the ground, as well as various writers from elsewhere who we’ve found helpful (including Fanon, but others too like Alain Badiou, Wamba dia Wamba, Jacques Ranciere, Michael Neocosmos, John Holloway, Richard Pithouse and the like). Indeed, throughout 2019, padkos focused on John Holloway’s approach where it is clear that “the idea that the world could be changed through the state was an illusion” (Holloway 2005. ‘Twelve Theses’).
In notes for an exciting forthcoming book project (see below), Nigel Gibson points out that
“Fanon was one of the first theorists of the anticolonial revolution to warn that the counter-revolution was not simply caused by external forces. … The tragedy of the anticolonial struggles, Fanon continues, is framed by the macro-political outlooks of the anticolonial movement leaders, and by the intellectuals who fetishize political power, seeing access to the colonial apparatus (and the state) as their prize”.
So we’ve asked Nigel to share some thoughts about (a) what Fanon’s thinking brings to this task and (b) his own reflections around contemporary ‘politics at a distance from the state’.
You may remember that Nigel was a central player in CLP’s big ‘Fanomenal event’ in 2011 that we organised to mark the 50th anniversary of Fanon’s death. We had the pleasure of welcoming Nigel back in 2017 when he facilitated a padkos conversation on ‘Fanon, our current context, and the praxis of emancipatory politics’, and he addressed a public seminar, co-hosted with the Paulo Freire Project, on ‘Fanon, politics and psychiatry’.
At the moment Gibson is working on a really exciting new Fanon-focused collection that he will edit, to be called Fanon Today: The Revolt and Reason of the Wretched of the Earth (forthcoming from Daraja Press, 2021). Check out your padkos attachment where Nigel describes the new book’s key motivations, themes and contributions.
RSVP – Please let us know if you’re coming on the 2nd March by calling Cindy at the office (033 2644 380) or emailing padkos@churchland.org.za
*Paulo Freire Institute – South Africa / Paulo Freire Project, of the Centre for Adult Education, School Education, University of kwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).
Resources
Fanon Today: The Revolt and Reason of the Wretched of the Earth
Nigel Gibson – Background from Wikipedia
Padkos 2020 gets off to a cracking start as internationally renowned Fanon-scholar, Nigel Gibson, returns to CLP on Monday, 2nd March! Nigel’s visit comes as a result of our ongoing collaboration with the Paulo Freire Project* with whom we’re co-hosting this discussion on Frantz Fanon and a ‘politics at a distance from the state’. Get yourselves to the CLP offices on 2 March and we’ll start at 10:30am. Stay after for a light lunch too.
Padkos 2020 gets off to a cracking start as internationally-renowned Fanon-scholar, Nigel Gibson, returns to CLP on Monday, 2nd March!
Nigel’s visit comes as a result of our ongoing collaboration with the Paulo Freire Project* with whom we’re co-hosting this discussion on Frantz Fanon and a ‘politics at a distance from the state’.
Get yourselves to the CLP offices on 2 March and we’ll start at 10:30am. Stay after for a light lunch too.
CLP has worked & experimented for a long time thinking about a ‘politics at a distance from the state’, prompted by struggles that are being thought on the ground, as well as various writers from elsewhere who we’ve found helpful (including Fanon, but others too like Alain Badiou, Wamba dia Wamba, Jacques Ranciere, Michael Neocosmos, John Holloway, Richard Pithouse and the like). Indeed, throughout 2019, padkos focused on John Holloway’s approach where it is clear that “the idea that the world could be changed through the state was an illusion” (Holloway 2005. ‘Twelve Theses’).
In notes for an exciting forthcoming book project (see below), Nigel Gibson points out that
“Fanon was one of the first theorists of the anticolonial revolution to warn that the counter-revolution was not simply caused by external forces. … The tragedy of the anticolonial struggles, Fanon continues, is framed by the macro-political outlooks of the anticolonial movement leaders, and by the intellectuals who fetishize political power, seeing access to the colonial apparatus (and the state) as their prize”.
So we’ve asked Nigel to share some thoughts about (a) what Fanon’s thinking brings to this task and (b) his own reflections around contemporary ‘politics at a distance from the state’.
You may remember that Nigel was a central player in CLP’s big ‘Fanomenal event’ in 2011 that we organised to mark the 50th anniversary of Fanon’s death. We had the pleasure of welcoming Nigel back in 2017 when he facilitated a padkos conversation on ‘Fanon, our current context, and the praxis of emancipatory politics’, and he addressed a public seminar, co-hosted with the Paulo Freire Project, on ‘Fanon, politics and psychiatry’.
At the moment Gibson is working on a really exciting new Fanon-focused collection that he will edit, to be called Fanon Today: The Revolt and Reason of the Wretched of the Earth (forthcoming from Daraja Press, 2021). Check out your padkos attachment where Nigel describes the new book’s key motivations, themes and contributions.
RSVP – Please let us know if you’re coming on the 2nd March by calling Cindy at the office (033 2644 380) or emailing padkos@churchland.org.za
*Paulo Freire Institute – South Africa / Paulo Freire Project, of the Centre for Adult Education, School Education, University of kwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).
Resources
Fanon Today: The Revolt and Reason of the Wretched of the Earth