Pedals and plants for a better life
If it weren’t for the news of a second wave wreaking havoc in Europe and other parts of the world, one could be forgiven for thinking Covid-19 was just a bad nightmare from which were starting to wake up.
Apart from the tragic loss of life, the desperate levels of unemployment and economic hardship in South Africa will be with us for months, perhaps years, to come. Yet some of the responses to the crisis have shed light on what is possible when people take action in their own neighbourhoods.
Two things give me great hope at the moment: gardens and bicycles. With regard to the first, I must confess, my thumbs don’t have a speck of green on them. But the bicycle, which has made an appearance at key moments throughout my life, most recently in 2012 when the dream of Open Streets began, seems to have returned to give hope and inspire action.
Globally, there has been increased interest in “growing fruit and vegetables at home”. In Cape Town I have witnessed how this has happened at various scales. In some cases, the desire came from wanting to do something locally, as was the case with Tana Paddock, an activist of various causes who got involved with a group of neighbours in building a garden outside the Sea Point library. I saw her go from thinking about what would be a simple and Covid-wise way to engage with her community to spending days and days gardening and mobilising others to join her.
In other cases, it came from a place of knowledge and experience that highlights how food security and resilience will become a priority in our response to the crisis and in the future as a whole.
A virtuous cycle ensues when we take ownership of our surroundings – those we share with our fellow humans and which, as the pandemic has highlighted, have fundamental value in how we bounce back.
It is the “in-between spaces” – which during lockdown we were prevented from inhabiting, sometimes due to strange reasoning – that hold so much value and potential to help us lay down foundations for what the optimists among us hail as the process of building back better.
This inevitably takes me to the streets. Having spent many years thinking about how these public spaces could serve as conduits to connect, I found it poignant that despite lockdown travel bans, connections were being made through online conversations and initiatives such as the community action networks (CANs).
Those networks have evolved with time. As with all volunteer-based initiatives, some have not lasted. But in other cases, they have become platforms that can respond to other needs.
Last weekend, for instance, a bicycle ride was organised to physically connect not just some of the volunteers still involved in the CANs, but also whole neighbourhoods that would not normally connect despite being directly linked by a 1km stretch of road. This is the case for Langa and Bonteheuwel. As Mzikhona Mgedle, one of the bicycle ride organisers who is working to set up Langa’s first Bicycle Hub, said: “We are so close but yet so far and the bicycle makes it possible for us to connect in many ways.”
The bicycle is indeed a good antidote to Covid. In addition to enabling physical distancing while travelling outdoors and contributing to physical and mental health in general, it also builds social cohesion. The many bicycle-inspired actions in Langa and Khayelitsha are just the tip of the iceberg. More people on bikes means an economic opportunity for local entrepreneurs, as well as more eyes on the street, which helps increase safety and shows a new way of travelling from A to B. It also shows a practical and direct way to respond to climate change, a challenge that has felt intractable. Bicycles, for good reason, have been touted as the solution to many social ills.
The Covid nightmare is far from over and even though we have learnt to live with some of the limitations and rules, we are yet to figure out what this “new normal” entails. Some of it will be the exacerbation of the pre-existing conditions our city exhibited well before Covid-19, and some we might not yet fathom.
In any case, as my friend Mike Freedman likes to say, there is always something beautiful about working for the place we choose as home. This rings truer than ever, as finding things that bring us collective joy and help us build relationships at neighbourhood level is the best way to overcome a global pandemic. Bicycles and gardens might be part of that long-term response.