Rising to the occasion
Covid-19 is showing us that we can again unite behind a cause; NGOs must reclaim their role
COVID-19 has removed the veil on real poverty in South Africa, showing us what we have normalised – rampant unemployment and extreme poverty.
It was always there; the coronavirus has just made us all more aware of it because of the immediate crisis.
The challenges facing civil society are great. Extraordinary leadership by NGOS will be required in the months ahead. What we are seeing, is the rise of civil society during this crisis.
Civil society, in the past three decades in South Africa, has become less impactful.
Pre-Covid, were we really heard? Were we really working together?
In the past six weeks during lockdown, I have seen organisations coming together to work.
The challenge remains in working together with the government. The recent call by the government to stop civil society distributing food came as a shock. This is the time we all come together, to the aid of our most vulnerable.
Across the world, civil society is being called upon more and more, and we need to collaborate and connect. The work happening on the ground in South Africa has been driven by civil society. In challenging times and during crisis, that is when you see the rise of civil society.
I am in awe of those who have come through. We came together pre-democracy to fight apartheid, and Covid-19 is showing us that we can work together again behind one cause. NGOs need to reclaim their role.
My biggest observation is that the challenges and social ills within communities have been somehow brushed off in the past – the level of poverty, the level of unemployment, a nation in despair has somehow been normalised.
South African youth are unemployed and people are living in poverty yet we, as a nation, continue as a country.
Covid-19 has shown us the reality of the poverty and uprooted all the things we normalised. It has held a mirror up to our faces so that we cannot ignore it.
Why does it take a pandemic like Covid-19 to get us to start working together, the haves and the have-nots?
I have seen a lot of work happening in communities, where an affluent community will be cooking soup for a community where there are fewer resources and less equality. This looks good – but why rise only now? Why do things need to fall apart before we help one another? That mirror was there all the time.
We need to reflect on some of the things we, as a nation and the world, have tried to ignore – the plight of people who, due to the inequalities in this world, have been uprooted.
As a youth network with more 4 500 activators, as we call the youth who have gone through our leadership training programmes, we have found our youth are a beacon of hope during this devastating time.
We have seen our youth activators go out into their communities and make a difference on the ground.
They are part of the solution, not the problem. These are the same youth who are seeing their promises of a future slip away once more, as the economy is crushed by this pandemic, yet they are out there in their communities, creating impact.
I live in awe at how much young people in South Africa have said: “What can we do?”
Young people are starting soup kitchens in their communities; they are gathering and distributing food parcels; they are training their elders in physical distancing; helping with screening; being the source of information in their community WhatsApp groups by translating Covid information into their own languages so everyone can understand; they are out there on the front lines of this battle against the invisible enemy.
They didn’t wait to be mobilised; they went out there and started creating change. That is what it is all about. That is why we do what we do.