THE STORY OF TSHEPISONG WEST, SOWETO, as seen by SocioTech Facilitator ZENOBIA ISAACS
In a Nutshell
SocioTech Facilitator Zenobia Isaacs, originally from Onseepkans village in the Northern Cape, shares her experiences and thoughts about SocioTech’s Sustainable Agriculture programme in Tshepisong West, Soweto, Gauteng.
She says…
Every community has positive features and challenges. Tshepisong West is a complicated community. On the positive side there is such wonderful social support. The farmers we work with are good to each other. Every time I visit, I see an inspiring example of how they support each other. For instance, if one person doesn’t have money to buy seedlings, one of the other farmers will take money out of his pocket and say: ‘let me buy for you.’ There also seems to be a lot of family support. I see teams of mothers and daughters working together. I have also been inspired by the way that the able-bodied participants have helped the disabled participant to dig his trenches.
They also motivate each other. They inspire each other – I recently met a little boy. He is only 11 years old, but he has been inspired by the success of other farmers to start growing himself. They also seem to be very good at coordinating who grows what so that everyone has their own markets. They seem to look around and if one person has cucumber, another grows lettuce. There are a lot of business plans and side hustles beginning to happen. Everyone seems to be busy with many different projects; shoe repair, building, vegetable selling, seedling selling, tomato jam. I think that this is the beginning of a hyperlocal economy – where people are selling to each other and the money stays in the community.
That is the good news, but there are also problems. Unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, rape and robbery are all major challenges in the area. I am not judging – I also come from a community like that. The community have been let down before so there are quite high levels of anxiety and suspicion.
Getting participants to believe in themselves and in the potential for change requires patience and persistence. It is about showing up, communicating clearly and doing what was promised consistently so that those that are sceptical start to believe.
There was an initial phase before I started at SocioTech. I think that was less successful and things went wrong with the communication and the community got angry. Late last year we met with the councillor in an attempt to put things right. In that meeting we explained the programme and sought his assistance in moving forward. That process culminated in a relaunch in April this year. Since then, there has been great progress. The councillor is a big blessing for the community. He is committed to development for his people. He has played a big role in helping the SocioTech facilitators to understand the community and then to meet the community. He has been vital to mobilizing the community – calling meetings for us to meet the farmers and helping the farmers to understand how SocioTech works. And I can see that this new spirit of communication is making a difference – the gardens are looking so much better than before and some of the people who had lost hope are back feeling positive.
There have been challenges – for instance not everyone understands that the Phinda-Phinda process whereby those who teach others are eligible to get a tunnel. The councillor has been part of trying to explain why some people got tunnels and others didn’t, but it is hard. There is so much need and we never have enough tunnels to meet the demand.
