An Internship in Pretoria, South Africa
I spent one week of my summer term internship at IDASA in these mountains outside of Tzaneen, Limpopo, at a Citizen Leadership for Democratic Governance Workshop.
The landscape between Pretoria and Tzaneen is dotted with thousands of small homes, many of which are no bigger than garden sheds. A few of the dwellings are made of brick, but the majority are pieced together with a collection of refuse materials – sheets of metal, boards and sticks, and even old billboards. What’s even more striking than the poverty on the four hour drive from Pretoria, which is one of South Africa’s most developed cities, into the heart of one of the poorest provinces, are the contrasts. The road north begins as a multi-lane highway, punctuated with toll booths and upscale petrol stations, complete with restaurants and hotels. After the last toll booth, the landscape changes to desert – the trees change to cacti, the grass to rock and dirt. Further along the road it changes again, this time more dramatically to rolling hills, banana groves and lush vegetation, and eventually into a winding, two lane road that climbs into the mountains.
I spent my week in these mountains outside of Tzaneen, Limpopo, along with two colleagues and thirty participants of a Citizen Leadership for Democratic Governance Workshop sponsored by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA). The participants of the workshop have chosen to put their lives on hold and attend forty hours of training per month for four months. Their backgrounds are wide-ranging, but all of the participants have at least two things in common: they are leaders in their communities that have a desire to address the issues that most affect them, and they lack the resources and the formal training to maximize their potential to do so most effectively. This is where IDASA comes in, which pays for everything from transport, meals and accommodation, to the course itself.
I conducted interviews with ten participants in order to understand both more about their backgrounds and their progress in the course so far (we just completed the second month of training). Most of the interviewees expressed similar concerns about their communities – a lack of clean water, inadequate sanitation, unemployment, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, etc. Many are from large families that are being supported by one income, perhaps two. One woman I talked to, who is recently unemployed, has scaled back her meals to two a day in order to make sure her kids have enough to eat. Almost everyone wanted to study at the University, but never considered it an option for lack of money. From the perspective of a privileged outsider, the day to day struggles of many of them seems unbearable. Yet these people were some of the friendliest, vibrant, silly, and hopeful people I have ever met. As they shared bits and pieces of their culture with me and I shared with them, I realized that there is an incredible amount of knowledge we can take away from the whole experience, and that we all have a long way to go as well.