March 30, 2006

E-newsletter # 23

Dear Friends,

Listen to this story about a network at work networking. At the Joining Hands Against Hunger exploratory meeting in Johannesburg in January, Philemon Talane, representing the Nkuzi Development Association in Polokwane, Limpopo Province, handed out copies of his organization’s National Evictions Survey. Christopher Saaiman of Pacaltsdorp in the Southern Cape took home a copy. When Christopher visited a local community of farm workers, he showed them the report. An old man who is threatened with eviction from his place on a farm looked through this booklet, which came from a place more than 800 miles away. As he is illiterate, he paid special attention to the photographs in the report. He saw the picture of a standoff between a white farmer and a black Nkuzi advocate, both shaking their fingers at each other. He must have identified with the old man in the hat standing in the back. He felt inspired to gather the support of a pastor and a lawyer, and together they went to the owner of the old man’s farm. The eviction plans were reversed!

Nearly one million people have been evicted from South African farms since the end of Apartheid. 77 percent of these are women and children; most are functionally illiterate. Unlike migrant workers in other countries, many of these families have lived on the same farm for decades if not for generations.

Although recent legislation declares that no one may be evicted from a farm without a court order, many farm workers are unaware of their legal rights and do not know where they can go for assistance. Advocacy organizations such as Nkuzi document the fact that the number of farm dweller households evicted since 1994 is greater than the total number of households that have benefited from all land reform initiatives during the same period.

We heard the above networking story at the March meeting of the JHAH organizing team in Pacaltsdorp. You can tell from our choice of the term, “ organizing team,” that the group is ready to move forward toward becoming an established JHAH network. Among many steps taken in this direction was the choice of a name: Sisonke Masilwe Indlala, which is Xhosa for “Together Let Us Fight Hunger.” American counterparts and supporters ought to be relieved that the name does not require pronouncing any click sounds. The group also formulated a statement of purpose for its life together (quoted here with South African spelling):

We are a network of churches, organisations and movements working together to fight hunger by mobilising for sustainable holistic human settlements, primarily in rural areas of South Africa. We share experiences and insights in search of locally appropriate alternative models that empower poor people.

The vision of sustainable holistic human settlements involves more than families threatened with eviction from private farms. In the Outeniqua Mountains near Pacaltsdorp, the South African government is responding to the pressures of globalization by privatizing state-owned forests. Once again, families and communities that have long depended on government-sponsored settlements in the forests are forced by the new owners to move out, often with no place to go but to already overcrowded and impoverished urban shantytowns. A loose network of 22 separate villages has formed a regional forum calling itself the Forestry Indaba, with the overall goal to see that people get houses and land to live on and an opportunity to run their own forestry businesses.

Maureen Gertse heads up the Housing Committee in the forest settlement of Jonkersberg, where she has lived her entire life. For three generations her family has paid rent for their home, yet they still don’t have the right to live there. While she continues to lobby the government for ownership of her house and land, Mrs. Gerste generates income by offering reasonable bed and breakfast accommodation in the indigenous forest. She is part of yet another network, called Mothers of Creation, whose members welcome visitors into their homes and promise “insights into life as most South Africans live it.” We have already made reservations to stay with Maureen when our presbytery’s Hunger Action Enabler visits in June.

We expect that all of this networking will take on an international dimension next month during the visit to South Africa by a delegation from the Presbytery of the Western Reserve. Members of Sisonke Masilwe Indlala are eager to meet JHAH activists from northeast Ohio and to explore avenues for mutual encouragement. Pray that all participants will hear new stories and gain fresh insights and find ways of working together into the future.

Due to traveling with the group from Cleveland, we will not send out an April newsletter. We’ll write again in May.

Susanne and Ken

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 339