Publications
Partners
I was travelling in the backwaters of rural Kuruman today in the Ga Segonyana district. Ga Segonyana is just adjacent to the Joe Morolong District of Kuruman, which is currently experiencing a school boycott, in which parents have kept their children from school for over three months to demand that government tar a road which runs through their communities.
I was impressed by some of the good work government has undertaken to provide clinics, roads and electricity to these rural communities.
And Yet there was so much that shocked me to the core.,In the village of Dithoswaneng, learners attend school with hungry stomachs. Most come from child headed households or live with their gogos (Grand mothers). Many simply end up taking exploitative informal jobs like collecting scrap and eventually dropping out of school. Because the need to feed the family comes first.
Or the school in Gasehubane Village, which has a school built in the heart of an asbestos mining area and built with asbestos fortified bricks.
Gasehubane is off the beaten track, with no tarred roads in or out of the village. The only reminder of its deadly legacy, is the un-tarred main road through the village which once led to an asbestos mine, which has since closed.
The Principle and parents have been trying for years to get government to relocate the school but to no avail. Promises have been made but not kept. The sign at the entrance of the school warns to enter at your own risk.
When speaking to the principal I asked him why students were still attending if the parents were aware of the health dangers, and he advised that the pupils that are left, have no other economic alternative. So far a teacher and a student have succumb to suspected asbestosis. Hau.
How could it be possible that our students could be sent to their possible death and government turns a blind eye?
Then there was the Gamopedi Vegetable Project, where communities have through their own initiative started a vegetable garden to secure their food and income, but have been waiting for over two years for electricity to power the bore hole. This again, despite repeated promises from government.
But all in all, these communities, located in the forgotten spaces of our new democracy are determined to forge ahead.
In Garuele a project to breed goats by a cooperative of ten women is steadily building a successful base for further growth, so too in the Galotolo poultry project, where a co-operative of women have pooled their resources to farm eggs which they sell to the community at R7.20 per half dozen. (in town the same eggs would sell for R20 per half dozen)
And in Lokoleng women are determined, despite no assistance from government to develop their vegetable garden in one of the driest places in south Africa. If only they could access the bore holes.
It is easy for us to criticize those parents who hold their children from school in order to demand the very basic delivery of a road. Yet, when you live in a place where roads are the difference between progress and poverty, it might not be that much to ask.
