JONATHAN JANSEN | Take a page from their book — not our MPs’, of course

The power of community.

As I watched for the umpteenth time our dysfunctional parliament descend into chaos through a full-on display of gratuitous insults, the wilful abuse of meeting procedures, the ineptitude of parliamentary leadership, and a sitting president who refuses to account for his own alleged misdeeds, it was clear this government long ago gave up working for the people who put them in those soft seats on ample salaries.

At the same time these elected clowns were wasting taxpayers’ money, there were hundreds of staff and students at a small Johannesburg school loading 3,000 reading books onto a truck whose load would eventually make its way to a severely deprived school in the rural winelands of the Hex River Valley almost 1,300km away. This was the most moving demonstration of the power of community I had ever witnessed.

I recently visited Hex River Valley Senior Secondary School in a destitute township off the N1 highway called De Doorns, about 140km northeast of Cape Town. A Google search describes De Doorns as “a slum” at the centre of the export grape industry. The poverty is palpable in and outside this high school. Most of the students are children of seasonal labourers on the wealthy farms of the area. The library has virtually no books apart from some local newspapers.

Why the visit? A few years ago, a thin, small-figured student from the school approached me via Facebook to help her become a teacher. Manise Sibiya’s marks were reasonably good, so I approached Cape Town universities on her behalf. A friend at the Cape University of Technology took over and facilitated an application, admission and a bursary, and to our delight, Manise became one of the student leaders on the education campus and excelled in her academics. She would take up a post at her old school, and it was very clear during my visit there that this quiet, unassuming teacher was highly regarded as a leader among her peers. So when Manise asked me to come and inspire teachers and students in De Doorns, I jumped into my car excited about meeting her in person for the first time and hopefully contributing to the school.

But the library at this Hex River valley school bothered me; there was nothing there. There were children, I was told, who could not read as late as high school. So I made the call for books on my Facebook page. In no time, South Africans across the country sent small packages of books. But it was a movement at IR Griffith Primary in Randburg that overwhelmed the emotions. IRG is not a privileged school; they only collect about 48% of their school fees. Yet the school is richly diverse under the inspirational leadership of Margarida Lopes. Then the miracle happened.

We wanted to give books to the children in the other school to make them feel happy.

—  Pupils at IR Griffith Primary

Margarida and her teachers had encouraged the children to bring books from home. Some brought more than 20 books. The nearby Delta Park school for remedial pupils pitched in as did the Randburg library. In no time, thousands of books lined the hallways of IRG. Then I sent out a call on social media to courier companies, starting with DHL Johannesburg (I am still waiting for them to call back). It was smaller courier groups that lined up to carry the books southwards to Stellenbosch University, from where my team will do a mass delivery to the De Doorns school. Dean from MySocialLife, an online media literacy group, was the first on board, and one of his clients, DPD Laser, sent this exciting message: “OK, if the books are boxed we will collect and send to Stellenbosch free of charge.”

IRG sprang into action. The children boxed the books. The smiling, energetic ground staff loaded the books onto the truck. Teachers spoke of how they had motivated the children to learn about serving others. The younger pupils explained: “We wanted to give books to the children in the other school to make them feel happy.” In the background, the youngsters can be seen furiously packing books since the truck was about to arrive. In the meantime, a district director had arrived and said a school in Soweto had many books; he would speak to them.

This week, the truck loaded with 3,000 books made its way to Stellenbosch in the Cape and from there to the school in De Doorns. Easily the most powerful lesson learnt is how ordinary South Africans make meaningful connections among each other (schools, parents, teachers, students, workers, social media followers, courier companies and so on) to serve people they had never met, to change their futures through the gift of reading books.

Our government-centric view of the world was always wrong. It is the people who lead and change SA through the power of community.