Guguletu Part III: Ubuntu

In South Africa there is a saying in Xhosa: “Ubuntu.” It means “I am because you are.” This basically means that all people are connected through everyone else. I noticed last week that there is a large sense of community in Guguletu. We visited the home of two orphans – a 19 year old girl and her younger brother who was 10 years old. They live in a shack by themselves because their mother died two years ago. The day we visited them they did not have electricity because it ran out. In the townships, people do not pay at the end of the month for the electricity. They pay before and when the amount they paid runs out, the electricity just shuts off. Recently, the brother has started asking why he doesn’t have some of the things other kids have. The sister said she used to want to kill herself but realized there would be no one left to take care of her brother if she wasn’t there. She doesn’t work and she still needs to complete grade 12 because she didn’t do well the first time. Her brother, fortunately, does go to school. We got the chance to walk to where they used to live which occupies many more children. (Kitchen pictured above) It is very close to where they live now. It was larger but much dirtier. We met some of the children and they, of course, loved the children and the dum dums! I asked her if she received support from her neighbors. She said she did and that that was a great help for her and her brother when times get tough. Without a close-knit community, I couldn’t imagine living alone.

JL Zwane helps to increase the aura of community in Guguletu by helping out many people. Prescilla is a single mother who cares after 12 children – 4 of which are her own. The children she cares for all would have been orphans if it wasn’t for Prescilla. All of them are school-aged and she works very hard to keep them in school. They all sleep in two rooms and some of them have to sleep on the floor because there aren’t enough beds. I met a young girl in 6th grade. She was very sweet and she loved that we were in her home. She asked me for my phone number before we left – even though we have cell phones here, I didn’t know my own number! The trip was quick. We dropped off some food parcels for them and left because we were planning on returning later in the week. When we returned, we presented the family with a donation to help them renovate their home. Some people from the trip last year fundraised a lot of money to help fix up their house and it was an honor to present that to Precilia! She couldn’t keep the smile off her face!

In both of these cases, ubuntu is present. A large sense of community is evident to me throughout the portions of Guguletu that I have seen. I have heard some speakers tell my group that ubuntu is fading, and that makes me really sad. I feel it is a generational thing and that hopefully as my generation here in South Africa grows older, the importance of ubuntu grows stronger.