Keeping community guessing on key developments a let- down

A RECENT Facebook post on my wall reads: “To Manenberg with love… Sunday mornings were the best. Walking down the concrete streets to church. In every street was an auntie who made the koesusters, and the smell was so lovely; mixed with curry and stew, not forgetting the gebraaide hoender vir na kerk (roasted chicken for after church)… The colourful display of church clothes, the peace, the quiet, the art and the best of this beloved community. No matter what they say, you still remain the best.”

This was followed by an inspiring moment when I attended an awards ceremony by one of the many organisations that work in Manenberg, the Children’s Radio Foundation. Manenberg children and youth walked away with the best Community Builder award on this national platform.

This is the kind of resilience people in this community have to build into others’ lives and improve the standard of living. The nine-year-old girl who spoke when they received the award said that Manenberg was a beautiful place full of hope. The energy which makes this such a wonderful community was not consulted, I thought, when I read the recent article on the closure of the GF Jooste Hospital. The people of this community were dealt a blow with this essential service being taken away, but I don’t think you can knock out this community’s resilient spirit.

Manenberg

is a community mostly used by government and, sad to say; development organisations, as a testing ground for funding projects and development ideas. I joke that the amount of money being spent in Manenberg could have been invested and every household should by now have had a steady monthly income.

The closure of the GF Jooste Hospital and the idea of building a college at the current premises rings a bell for me. The college can be built by the government department and it would look good and prepare hopefully a solid group of servants in blue to protect our communities. The question, though, is how this develops the community it will be located in. I hope the designers of this plan don’t just have a grand idea that the visibility of men and women in blue will ease the violence which exists in this community.

Access to basic services is a constitutional right. Removing one of the essential needs in a community without an alternative, while a relocation of this service is researched, debated and goes through the red tape of bureaucracy is just not legal and right to the people concerned. The burden which this will add to a people who are already striving to make it through the day with life challenges will just aggravate the social ills they face.

This response is aimed to alert the people who call themselves the engineers of this plan to change things in Manenberg without proper consultation with the people concerned. I know Manenberg and most of the lifelong serving community leaders. I also know that you have maybe consulted them and they have made significant suggestions to you on how to structure change.

They have given you points on how to understand this community and how to build enthusiasm and get buy-in from its people. This I know now from reading the article, and took note that you have not taken their advice into consideration. This is the same story as every pilot project: you have come in and made promises, brought experts in, spent money and at the end, did not properly consult the people of this community.

Manenberg is a community that has gone through many hands. Handouts have come and gone. Hand-up projects have entered and some have had the tenacity and are still around. This community has seen a lot of money, but has it improved the lives of its people? The community might need an FET college or a job creation academy, maybe it does not need a hospital worth a couple of billion rand, maybe it needs interventions raising the livelihoods of the families, and they can pay for private health care. Consult its people, it’s the right thing to do.

Sedrico Husselman grew up in Manenberg and was a youth-development worker in the community since the age of 16. He is a graduate in Development Studies, UWC, and a recent fellow of the Emerging Generational Leaders Southern Africa programme of USAID/FreedomHouse. He heads the School Liaison Unit at the Artscape Theatre Centre.