Pay forward the luck of the draw

CROSS bridges. This is what is at the heart of our story about Jedidjah Rotter, the Dutch-born Joburg mother of three whose conscientisation around the impoverished, often unseen people on the streets of the city has led to the remarkable “I Have a Name” project on Facebook. Her pictures and stories, which link the people she meets with those who access her Facebook account who wish to help strangers, already has 10 000 followers.

We commend her. We also believe you, our readers, will be moved by her drive to do something positive in a surge of negative thinking in the city. Started only two months ago, Rotter’s ad hoc project now has all the makings of a grassroots campaign which could easily go around the country, offering ordinary people the chance to pay forward their luck of life’s draw.

Rotter’s desire to make a difference is shared by most of us, especially those gifted by privilege. But the truth is that very few of us are able to move on that desire. Perhaps it becomes too great a responsibility. You have to follow up. You have to be committed. Perhaps we feel we just don’t know how to do it.

That’s why we need people like Rotter: to show us the way as a kind of moral guide, but also to be the leader, and give us the opportunity to do some good which we somehow can’t get going ourselves.

There might be some truth in the concern some of us have that South Africans don’t really care about each other, and that crime and underlying anger are at the core of this detachment. People are too afraid, or too wrapped up in themselves, to even roll down their window and show some engagement with another human being.

Rotter reveals that this can have myriad rewards. We think that’s special.