by Joel Pearson,
Thinking Africa Newsletter
Life is arduous for the people of eThembeni informal
settlement on the outskirts of Grahamstown. They live without electricity, and
water must be collected from one of only a few taps which frequently run dry.
Last year, a couple died in a shack fire that community members were unable to
fight because there were no taps nearby. Fire trucks could not enter the
settlement because there is no adequate road leading into it. The region’s dry,
hot summers are felt most acutely here, and winter rains turn the
sparsely-vegetated plateau on which people have built their houses into a muddy
deluge. It should be no surprise that promises made by well-meaning visitors
are received with an air of scepticism – they seldom materialise. And indeed
promises have come from many, most enthusiastically from the politicians who
make the rounds as election season approaches, giving full assurance that “service
delivery” will happen tomorrow, that a brighter future awaits. The people of
eThembeni are still waiting.
The case of eThembeni is by no means exceptional. These
zones of abandonment can be found across the country, registering in the
national consciousness only as places to be feared – and preferably cleared.
Shacks only make the news when they catch on fire – and only if the fire is a
raging inferno. Otherwise, people who live in shack settlements are looked upon
as criminals, as vermin, as disease, and they are thoroughly abandoned.
State-led social abandonment never features in government
rhetoric. Indeed, our leaders try and convince us that they are working towards
a “better life for all”. Jacob Zuma recently called for the people of this
country to cooperate in fostering “the values and moral fibre that has always
held our communities together”. Such appeals are ostensibly harnessed to the
notion of Ubuntu – a uniquely African value system premised on human
interdependence and community; a world-view in which the community precedes the
individual. It is most often summed up in the slogan: “umuntu ngumuntu
ngabantu” or “I am because we are”. Our leaders say that it is to Ubuntu that
we must turn in order to build a future society of equality and prosperity, in
order to save our society from the rampant individualism that has plagued it
since colonial invasion.
But if the fostering of community values has been the
driving force behind state policy, as has been claimed, it would seem that
shack dwellers across the country have been left out of the Ubuntu equation.
One need only look at the barren landscape of eThembeni to see that, for all
its rhetorical appeal and humanistic sheen, Ubuntu as a state-led project has
brought little material difference for most. A far cry from the espousal of a
dignity shared in common with humanity, the poor are looked upon by state
bureaucrats and technocrats not as human beings but as “problems” to be
“strategically managed”.
In practice, then, our leaders’ lip service to ostensibly
“pre-colonial” values has operated as little more than a mask to disguise what
remains a distinctly colonial system; a cloak of supposed “authentic
Africanness” behind which operates a system which bleeds humanity dry for the
benefit of a few individuals. While politicians may speak Ubuntu, their
disconnection from the people is reflected in the tinted windows of the
cavalcade of luxury vehicles which periodically rolls through South Africa’s
forgotten townships on the hunt for votes.
For those who struggle to make ends meet against enormous
odds, like those in eThembeni, the Ubuntu farce is plainly evident. When a
child goes to bed without food, the lie of Ubuntu is exposed. When a couple
burns to death in a shack, Ubuntu burns with them. When scores of miners living
in dire straits are mowed down by police bullets, the loudly proclaimed
humanism of our government is brutally blown to shreds. And when we hear it
snidely remarked that all of these desperate people “get what they deserve”,
Ubuntu is crucified.
That is not to suggest that the values of Ubuntu are
entirely absent in these forgotten areas. In the daily activities of many in
eThembeni and across much of Grahamstown East, for instance, one can witness an
extraordinary spirit of interdependence and communal reliance. But this has
certainly not been fostered through government intervention. If anything, it
has been in spite of the government that people have pulled together to
survive. It is not through “benevolent”, top-down management that Ubuntu is
fostered – it is in the daily struggles of the people on the ground, in the
face of abandonment and deepening poverty, that real humanistic values are made
flesh. Ubuntu is found in the remarkable few, who, in spite of chronic scarcity
and insecurity, devote themselves entirely to their community. It flourishes in
the kitchens of schools that have undertaken to provide food to gardens that
dot the location. It rises up in the songs of the musical groups where children
spend their afternoons. And, in eThembeni too, it bubbles in the soup kitchen
upon which nearly two hundred people rely for a weekly meal. These people don’t
need to be told what Ubuntu is – they live it every day.
Last year, a lavish ceremony welcomed Jacob Zuma to
Grahamstown. The local government set aside R250 000 for the proceedings.
Raglan Road, which few locals dare to walk at night and which, incidentally,
leads to eThembeni, was renamed Dr Jacob Zuma Drive. “No greater honour can be
given by a people than to share what is most precious to them – their home,
their freedom, their rights as citizens and their town or city,” said the
President upon receiving the key to the city, “together we will live up to
Makana’s spirit of service to the communities.” But no Presidential visit was
scheduled for eThembeni, where Makana’s “spirit of service” is sorely lacking.
The humanistic catch phrases that punctuate our leaders’
proclamations mean nothing to the people far below if they are not underpinned
by a substantive programme to end their suffering. If we learn anything from
the President’s visit it is this: if Ubuntu is truly to lead us to a future of
common prosperity, if it is truly to be a revolutionary song, its content
cannot come from the hollow evangelism of our politicians – it is up to us to
be the living embodiment of Ubuntu. It is in the choices we make every day that
Ubuntu is either fostered or undermined. If “I am because we are”, then my
humanity is drained to the extent that I allow those around me to suffer.
Ubuntu can be harnessed to achieve a new society only if we
recognise that by turning a blind eye to the struggles waged everyday to
acquire the basic necessities of life, we are dehumanized, brutalized, and
impoverished ourselves. With an apprehension of our inescapable
interconnectedness, one cannot but see the situation of the shack dwellers of
eThembeni – and of many millions more across the country – for what it really
is: an onslaught against our common humanity, a stain on our collective
conscience, an atrocity at the heart of the Rainbow Nation.
