Sowetan says...

The past week was one of the darkest moments of our democracy. The well-coordinated attacks on our economy, our infrastructure and chains of distribution demonstrated the ever-present threat to our national stability and democratic order.

What makes us even more vulnerable to this onslaught are precisely our nation’s fault lines of poverty, unemployment and inequality, which the rogues exploited to cause anarchy.

Tragically, the lasting impact of it all was the demolition of businesses, in particular small enterprises built through the daily toil of ordinary citizens who were armed with nothing more than hope and a dream.

Today, many of those dreams have been shattered and hopes of rebuilding wiped out. Yet, we believe that we ought never to have let despondency define our path.

While the mayhem was the work of a relative few, the project of restoration demands all of us to step up and do what we can to lay even stronger foundations on which we can rebuild.

For this reason, today we launch the #SowetanRebuild initiative, a call to action to begin the process of restoring small businesses and economic centres that bore the brunt of destruction.

We will tell stories of small enterprises which were looted and destroyed, and we call upon capable individuals, institutions and corporates to come on board to support their restoration and, hopefully, their sustainability in the future.

We invite you to make an investment that is as practical and relevant as possible to each of the enterprises or informal traders you choose to support – be it financial, infrastructural or technological in nature, the point is to provide a legup to help those affected.

If you would like to be part of this campaign, please contact us on any of our social media platforms or email us at rebuild@sowetan.co.za

We look forward to hearing from you, our readers.

Importantly, we ask that you play your part to help rebuild from the ashes.