Last week we spent in Johannesburg
and Kruger National Park. The first part of the trip was largely dedicated to
looking at the anti-apartheid experience in Johannesburg and comparing
Johannesburg to Cape Town. Regretfully, as we had to fit so many sights into
such a short period of time, we did not get to explore much of the city and
took more of what could be considered an academic bus tour of the city with
some planned activities along the way. One day we worked with the Boys and
Girls Club in Soweto and there we did get more exposure to the actual city. I
spent most of the day helping cook breakfast and lunch for the eighty of so
kids. Others helped garden, organize the small library, pick up trash, and keep
the kids occupied.
I had never worked with the Boys and
Girls Club before. How affective and simple the program is struck me. It seemed
that the goal of the program is to inspire confidence in children and to keep
them off the streets where they may be negatively influenced. We have visited a
similar organization during our first two weeks in Cape Town. At the Manenburg
Community Center organizers aimed to empower kids to avoid gangsterism through
after school programs. Not only were they able to positively influence these
kids during the program, but also kept them from possibly being pulled into
gang-related activities during those hours in the program. In Manenburg, where
gangsterism and violence are very prevalent, fighting youth involvement in
gangs became a top priority. We did not learn as much about Soweto’s current
circumstances as we did Manenburg’s. Mostly we knew about the protests that had
occurred in Soweto during apartheid.
We worked and played with the kids
for the majority of the day (we helped put on a small Easter celebration with
an egg hunt) and left. Our involvement in the Boys and Girls Club and in Soweto
wouldn’t be viewed as particularly impactful. More as particularly kind that
tourists are taking a day to help this organization’s relatively small staff
entertain a lot of children (one could also make the case that we were
voluntouring). What I was left thinking was about how even if the Boys and
Girls Club or the Manenburg Community Center was successful in their mission,
that still leaves the entire adult lives of those positively impacted
individuals. That part of their lives will still be subject to the
socio-economic apartheid still dominating South Africa’s economic structures.
Frequently people act like programs for children are a complete solution; like
if we raise our children better maybe the problems will all be solved. This
implies that the problem has always been with the people as a whole and that
through solving the aspect of the problem that exists within every individual
we can solve the greater issue. This ignores the structures that, although people
created them, are now freestanding and don’t need operators to continue their
affects. So there must always be an organized and multi-faceted approach to
solving problems. We need to address the manifestation of issues within the
individual and provide alternatives to those manifestations when they are
foreseeable (as is done at the Boys and Girls Club) and we need to create
structural change, whether that be deconstruction of systems or alteration, to
provide people with an avenue towards long-term sustainable change to pursue. A
lot of times activists and organizers like to focus on or prioritize one side
of resolving social issues (and there may easily be more than the two sides I
have discussed). This prioritization creates change but not sustainable
solutions. Approaching social issues from both individual and structural levels
is essential for progress. Hopefully there are organizations working in tandem
with the Boys and Girls Club in Soweto pursuing the structural change as well.
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