June 26, 2006

E-newsletter # 25

Dear Friends,

We have been on the move! Two days after Easter we received a delegation of six visitors from the Presbytery of the Western Reserve, and spent the next two weeks traveling with them from one end of South Africa—Polokwane in the northeast—to the other—Cape Town in the southwest. Reports on their experiences constitute e-newsletter #24.

Then in mid-May we moved from our rented house, where we had two burglaries, to the home of missionary colleagues from the United Church of Christ who had left for a seven-month furlough in the United States. Eleven days after moving in we welcomed three more friends from the Western Reserve: the Rev. Andy Jacob, the presbytery’s Hunger Action Enabler; the Rev. Nona Holy, also on the presbytery staff; and their two-year-old son, Christopher, who is not yet ordained.

Our road trip with the “Holy-Jacobs” from East London to Cape Town included meetings with some of the same Sisonke Masilwe Indlala partners encountered by the April delegation. This time, however, there was the additional bonus of spending a night in homes in the remote forestry community of Jonkersberg in the foothills of the Outeniqua Mountains.

The Southern Cape Land Committee (SCLC), one of our Joining Hands partner organizations, has facilitated the establishment of “Mothers of Creation”, a network of women in 12 separate communities who generate income from opening their homes to guests. The publicity brochure announces: “This is a different experience, and one to be thoroughly enjoyed … leave running water, reliable electricity, flushing toilets and preconceived notions in the city. Choose the excitement of the unknown, the joy of human contact and the opportunity to experience the realities of others’ lives.”

Some of the realities of life in Jonkersberg are fairly grim. The surrounding forest, once owned by the government parastatal SAFCOL, has been sold to a private corporation. Through agreements with SAFCOL, forestry workers and their families have lived in settlements in the forest for generations. The new owner, however, is “in the business of trees and not in the business of people,” and the process of privatization has forced many families to move to shacks in urban townships.

Maureen Gertse is the chairperson of the Jonkersberg Housing Committee, a group working hard to secure ownership of the houses they’ve rented and occupied for decades, and to get delivery of basic services from local government. The night of our visit, Maureen invited us to a community meeting called to discuss the plight of unemployed and retired people who are unable to pay for the electricity now provided by the corporation. A threatened cut-off date was imminent. A lawyer from SCLC took down the personal circumstances of each person present at the meeting and pledged to negotiate individual arrangements with the company.

As Maureen is also Jonkersberg’s local representative of the Mothers of Creation, her home was one of the two that hosted the five of us for the night. The next morning, she showed us around the village and introduced us to a broom maker, a pig farmer, and the teacher and children at the crèche (child care center). The promises of the brochure were abundantly fulfilled.

As we said good-bye to Andy, Nona and Christopher at Cape Town’s airport, we realized that this would probably be our last time in the Mother City before the two of us depart from South Africa. Following the next gathering of the Sinsonke Masilwe Indlala network at the end of July in the Eastern Cape village of Mooiplaas, we will begin preparations for our permanent return to Ohio in September—another major move. Our plan is to re-occupy our house on Anderson Road in South Euclid, and to re-join our recent visitors and to see many of you at the September meeting of the Presbytery of the Western Reserve.

Ken and Susanne