Saudika Hendricks
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Celebrating Ubuntu this Heritage Month: The Power of Community

 

Ubuntu is a uniquely African concept that exists in communities all over the continent in various forms. The word ‘’Ubuntu’’ itself, however, has South African roots in Nguni languages such as Xhosa and Zulu, and means ‘’humanity’’. To South Africans, the philosophy of Ubuntu is particularly special as it was endorsed and promoted by the late leader of our country, Nelson Mandela, during his presidency. In the book, Mandela’s Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage, Mandela defined Ubuntu as, “the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world, it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievements of others”.

 

This definition, however, cannot nearly encapsulate all the significance and power that this word holds. There is a tendency to trivialise the philosophy of Ubuntu to simply refer to being generous to our neighbours, when in actuality, it is the very foundation of any successful society. It is our values that shape us into authentic human beings and our inherent desire to be a part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world. Another renowned South African politician, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, described Ubuntu as meaning “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.”

 

We practice Ubuntu nearly every day of our lives in ways that we may not know. When we show respect to elders, when we help our community, a neighbour, or a friend, or when we place the needs of others above our own in an act of selflessness, we are undeniably carrying out the spirit of Ubuntu.

 

South Africa sees a change of seasons during the month of September, as we transition from winter to spring. On the 24th of September, in the sunny weather, South Africans all over the country beam brightly as they celebrate National Heritage Day with friends, family, and delicious food. This year, instead of the usual braai, Relocation Africa decided to celebrate National Heritage Day by commemorating the concept that is deeply embedded in our heritage and culture; the philosophy of Ubuntu.

 

We took the opportunity to coordinate a clothing drive for an organisation that we would like to give recognition to. Sisters Incorporated is based in the same community as our head office, and for this reason, we reached out to other members of the community for help, thereby making the clothing drive a communal effort instead of a mere company project. We handed out flyers, spoke to neighbouring businesses, and encouraged residents to get involved in the effort. Words cannot describe the joyous feeling of hearing the doorbell ring and seeing the kind person on the other side of the gate standing with their donations in hand, or the warm feeling of recognising the good that exists in the world.

 

Love is not lost, generosity is not lost, humility and kindness are not lost. It lives here in Africa.

 

Eventually, the clothing drive evolved as we saw people bring in all kinds of gently used items of value. The staff in our head office began bringing their donations in slowly but surely, and members outside of our company overwhelmed us with the number of boxes of clothes, crockery, cutlery, crafts, toys, trinkets, ornaments, and so much more, that were being brought in. It was heartwarming to see the energy that everyone was investing into doing something for a greater cause.

 

The day of the drop-off finally arrived and the women in the office found themselves sharing the duties of packing the goods into boxes. Good actions do good things for the soul, and this is evident in the way that the ladies in the office were passing around ceramic cups and glass trinkets to be wrapped securely in newspaper and packed neatly into boxes, folding clothes into piles, and pointing out the fun crafts that would all be added to the donations for Sisters Incorporated.

 

The scene encapsulated unity, helpfulness, and companionship. These are all the principles that Sisters Incorporated represent and instill in the women that they provide care for.

 

About Sisters Incorporated

Sisters Incorporated offers aid to abused women and children irrespective of their race, ethnicity, age, or class. They work hard at providing trauma counselling for these women and upskilling them in aim to transform them into active members of the public. Part of their mission statement is ‘’We provide care – free of judgement, criticism, and bias – and aspire to empower those who pass through our doors, to become better equipped for their role in society’’.

 

Upon arriving at their gates, the ladies at Sisters Incorporated greeted us with warm embraces and welcomed us inside their office. We sat and chatted for so long that we lost track of time, with topics of conversation ranging from details of the amazing work that they do at bettering the wellbeing of the women in the community, to how our values align with one another’s, and the different ways in which any individual can help out.

 

We encourage our readers to visit Sisters Incorporated’s website, and support them in any way possible. Their staff is eager to arrange a meeting with any potential donors, educate and inform you on what they do, or even embrace you and offer assistance if you ever find yourself needing help.

 

They offer holistic care, meaning that their objective is to help the individual heal in every way that they may need healing. This means that they have an in-house social worker to help the women and children overcome the trauma and abuse of their past. With a staff of over fourteen members, and an equally sized group of volunteers, their personnel include two house mothers who rotate shifts in order to have someone on duty 24/7, in the event that any woman may need immediate assistance. They also employ a cook who prepares warm meals for the ladies and their children every day, three times a day. More importantly, they have an amazing workforce that is dedicated to teaching the ladies practical skills that they can make use of in future as a means to generate an income for themselves, such as sowing, beading, and crafts.

 

Sisters Incorporated would not be able to do the extraordinary work that they do alone. Each person plays a vital role in the success of Sisters Incorporated and their ability to provide aid to those in need. Every member of their staff, every volunteer, every woman that walks through the gates seeking assistance, and every donor, contributes to the mechanism that is Sisters Incorporated. They are a true embodiment of the philosophy of Ubuntu. In their story, and even in efforts shown by the community and beyond, lies every factor that Nelson Mandela associated with the meaning of Ubuntu: Helpfulness, sharing, respect, care, trust, and unselfishness.

 

According to the South African philosophy, a person who behaves in these ways has Ubuntu, and therefore they are a full person.

 

Ubuntu is the natural propensity of the human to establish connections and build upon them. In South Africa, it is symbolic of our ability to unite with one another in striving towards a common good, and it encourages us toward selfless acts. Ubuntu is the word for humanity in the native Nguni languages of South Africa, and humanity is a quality we owe to each other.

 

 

 

Learn more about the inspirational work being done at Sisters Incorporated or contact their unsung heroes to make a donation by visiting their website.

 

 

 

Read more on the importance of charity and selflessness in a similar blog, or visit our Knowledge Centre to access our exclusive blogs, newsposts, and educational webinars.

 

 

 

Lize-Mari Ras
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Selflessness is also Self-Care

Charity Starts at Home

 

This famous phrase entails that we care for our own households before anything else, and we prioritise our family’s needs above everything else.

 

We offer our time, money, efforts, and energy to the people we care about the most.

 

But what about the less fortunate, who do not have a family or a home?  Who cares for those who are left uncared for?

 

Mandela Day, celebrated annually on the 18th of July, serves as a great reminder to all of us about the things we often forget about or neglect. It forces us to take a step back, shift our attention from our own problems, and humble ourselves by helping a neighbour in need. Mandela Day is not a public holiday. Rather, it is a day to honour the legacy of former South African president, Nelson Mandela, his values, and his commitment to justice and serving society.

 

Mandela Day is therefore a call to action based on the fact that each individual has the ability to make an impact. It is based on the notions behind one of his most famous quotes, ‘’Today we should all ask ourselves: What have I done to improve the surroundings in which I live? Do I litter or do I protect my surroundings? Do I buy stolen goods, or do I help reduce crime? ‘’

 

There are numerous things that you can do for Mandela day, as long as your efforts are altruistic and intended to benefit others. Whether you help out at an animal shelter, assist a friend with applying for a job, or donate a few blankets to your local shelter. You may choose to spend money, time, or energy, but the point is that you are doing something for a greater cause.

 

The idea behind the Mandela Day campaign is that Nelson Mandela fought for social justice for 67 years. Let us start with 67 minutes.

 

This year, at Relocation Africa, we decided to spend our 67 minutes caring for the less fortunate at the Haven Night Shelter located in Wynberg, Cape Town. It is a homeless shelter that cares for adults, reconnects them with family members they lost contact with, and help them reintegrate into society. The work they do is admiring and their start up story, which is available on their website, is so inspiring. They are an organisation that was founded for no other reason than to be at the service of those in need, and the passion of their employees is evident in the manner that they carry out their care.

 

We took the liberty of preparing lunch for the people at the shelter and personally delivered it. The members of the organisation met us with warm smiles. Their kindness was so contagious, and we listened to the way they expressed their sentiments about the people at the shelter. We witnessed the beautiful relationships between the guests and the employees, which speaks to the sincerity of their deeds.

 

And while all this happened on the 18th of July, this is not about Mandela day. Mandela day is merely a means and an opportunity that comes around once a year and forces us to remember those in need. Instead, this is about serving a cause greater than yourself, helping someone without expecting anything in return, putting your own needs aside and prioritising the needs of someone else. It is about using the means, energy, health, and blessings that was bestowed upon you by the Creator to help the creation.

 

Helping others, especially those who are less fortunate than yourself, is not only beneficial for the recipient of the help, but also makes a positive impact in your community and on yourself. We often become so focused on our problems that we forget to acknowledge our privilege. Helping others allows you to step out of the comfort of your life and into the reality of others. When we partake in prosocial actions or activities, although we are tending to the wellbeing of others, we also gain the multitude of personal benefits that helping people have on our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.

 

An article published in The Journal of Positive Psychology asked 400 participants to report on how frequently they engage in different acts of selflessness and how meaningful their life feels. The results showed that participants who were more altruistic reported a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. This is a fact that has been known for centuries, as even Aristotle wrote that finding happiness and fulfilment is achieved by ‘’loving rather than being loved.’’ Ironically, it is through giving that we receive.

 

Doing something for a greater cause helps to meet our basic psychological needs. It enables us to feel competent, to feel a sense of belonging, as well as allowing us to be more sincere in our intentions and interactions. According to another article published by Psychology Today, helping others is also said to assist us in regulating our own emotions, decrease symptoms of depression, and ultimately improve our mental wellbeing.

 

In short, volunteering your time, money, or energy to help others does not just make the world better, it also makes you better.

 

Mandela day merely serves as a reminder of the joys and reward that lies in being a part of something larger than yourself. Just because it has passed does not imply that our kindness should decrease.

 

Here are a few recommendations on how to give more meaning to your life, even after Mandela day:

  • Start small.
  • One person cannot solve world hunger or change the world but every day, small gestures could be more impactful than you could ever possibly imagine. Whether it is a loaf of bread or a kind word, you never know how significant it could be to them in that moment.
  • Make your helping count.
  • Not all types of giving have the same effects on us. If giving your time and energy to someone exhausts you more than it uplifts you because they are taking advantage of your kindness, perhaps find someone else to offer your help to. Helping others is more effective when you can see the impact that your actions have.
  • Show gratitude.
  • Being grateful for what you have and the people who help you can be just as rewarding as the act of helping others. Expressing gratitude can be a prosocial act too. When others take time to do something nice for you, making them feel appreciated can help build your relationship with them and make your life more meaningful, as well as theirs.

 

If you learned something interesting from this article and would like to read more interesting articles like this, click here.

 

Written by Saudika Hendricks.

Edited by Lize-Mari.

Ideation by Joy Jackson.

Lize-Mari Ras
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South African abroad: Facing the void and sense of loss…

 

Not that many years ago – in fact, the day before the RWC 2019 final – Andrea Zanin, sat in her daughter’s school assembly wearing her Springbok rugby jersey…

 

Andrea writes her story below:

 

At the assembly, there were two of us in green and gold, although Leah, my Zambian friend, declared that she was wearing her colours for the last time, having sold her soul to the Roses. Unacceptable. We were debating the intricacies of this very obvious and unequivocal betrayal until the buzz in the hall quietened and Amelia’s class stood for their opening song.

 

Thirty seconds into A World in Union I was chewing my lip raw in an effort to hold back tears. The heart of the song beat in the air as unfeigned voices imagined the far-off Utopia of a united world—I felt it in my bones. South Africa’s song — not really but it could so easily have been written for ’95, when the country stood on the precipice of a new age. So much hope.

 

Yet here I sat, in England in a Springbok jersey, listening to my pseudo-South African child, in an English school, singing a song that, to me, is not home.

 

The weight of the moment made visceral something that I have always known but not ever articulated in thought or emotion; that there’s a brutal sense of loss associated with the de-homing of the soul (and the person) — whether that de-homing is by choice or by force.

 

There was no weeping and gnashing of teeth or pulling at shrouds of black draping my grief-withered body when Warren and I (married two years and ready to see the world) boarded a plane “outa” town. We left peacefully and almost facetiously, like petulant children, stamping our feet and demanding more, better — testing the stretch of the umbilical cord. Ready to see the world and live dreams.

 

Of course, we didn’t know it was for good. Mitigating perhaps. Yet I was sure to visit all the old places I loved, just in case — my old house, my schools, the park where my brothers and I played hide-and-seek and argued over the unequal distribution of gumballs in bright blue bubble-gum ice creams that were bigger than our faces.

 

I drove down the streets where my childhood friends lived and remembered sleepovers, made-up languages, whispered conversations about tween crushes and who had asked whom to dance at Remy Cano’s disco the weekend before. These atmospheres now live in my dreams. I knew their time was up — as tangible realities, which is why I went to say goodbye. I had decided before I was ready to admit that I had.

 

The heartache might have taken me by surprise, but, really, I’d been getting used to it for some time without being fully cognisant, and so the emotional aftermath has been almost anticlimactic.

 

Loss is not justified by excess. This kind was a slow burn. I finally noticed the wound; bloody and festering but not entirely unfamiliar. How does it feel to be broken hearted when it wasn’t a person that did the pulverising but a place?

 

Agonising — yes. Tragic — of course.

 

The catalyst was the Rugby World Cup (2019), which incited a tidal wave of nostalgia to crash violently down on my unsuspecting psyche (poor thing), as I watched South Africa rise to glory with my friends and family in North London.

 

Rugby — really? I know it sounds kooky. Let me explain. Rugby is home. Home is gone. I’ve lived with that for longer than I’ve been an expat (albeit unsuspectingly) because the existential catastrophe is that home is not the South Africa that exists today; the South Africa of my childhood — a reality made all the more poignant with the perspective of immigration. This might sound obvious: no country is the same now as it was then. This is true. But South Africa had everything to gain because change was coming. The South Africa of my childhood was a pretty messed up place… but she faltered at the brink of epic and then floundered, and is still floundering like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe.

 

I’ve not merely lost time and even place, that’s quite natural; I’ve lost (as have all South Africans) what could have and should have been — a future in the land of my birth.

 

It’s life but it hurts.

 

So I sit, carefully crafting back together, with cello tape, glue and some sketchy needle-and-thread skills, the pieces of a shattered heart. As it turns out, that red, bulging, thumping beast of an organ that keeps me alive is quite broken. Exposing it feels weird and kind of uncomfortable.

 

Oh wait — this is vulnerability, right?

 

Not a fan. But I am going to embrace it because what else does one do with a broken heart? Cuddle it. Wallow in it. Sing to it. Give it chocolate. Take it to counselling. Put it on Facebook. Maybe? Probably. I don’t know. What I do know is that a writer must splurge — in the name of catharsis. Aristotle (and Plato — can’t leave the guy out), argued that the effect of tragic and comic theatre on an audience was the purification of the soul. That’s what this is. Purgation. My splurge. My story. My broken heart. Shared with you.

 

I don’t pine for South Africa but I miss her – the GRIT of the people, their resilience and humour – and when I see an orange sunset or hear thunder rumble across the sky, I ache for her beauty. She makes me angry, still – her disregard and indifference – and I mourn what almost was.

 

Often, I have to fight the feeling that I am passing on to my children a vague silhouette, an inkling, a ghost, of something that shaped me, that is important to me, that lives in me but is not really real, anymore. And yet I need it to be real. I need to remember — to slosh around in bottomless nostalgia. I need to reclaim my home. Go back in time. But also forge boldly ahead because home is here. Home is now. Home is my faith, my family—Warren, my children. England. Home is England — London, North London. The place of my ancestors. Simple? I guess. But why, then, is saying it so damn hard.

 

Author & Storyteller: Andrea Zanin.

 

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Lize-Mari Ras
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Exciting Win in the Supreme Court

There has been a massive win in the Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) for all South Africans who acquired foreign citizenship and lost their South African citizenship by automatic statutory operation and those planning to acquire foreign citizenship.

In terms of the s6(1)(a) South African Citizenship Act 88 of 1995, a South African citizen automatically loses their citizenship if by some voluntary and formal act other than marriage they acquire the citizenship of another country without first applying to the Minister of the Department of Home Affairs (“DHA”) for retention of their citizenship in terms of s 6(2) and being granted the retention.

Thousands of South Africans have lost their citizenship on this basis, and most were not even aware at the time, as the loss is automatic upon the acquisition of foreign citizenship. Many have only found out years later when trying to renew their passport.

The official opposition political party, the Democratic Alliance (“DA”), challenged the constitutionality of s 6(1)(a) and sought to have it declared invalid from October 6, 1995, when the Citizenship Act came into operation, and to have the citizenship of all those who had lost it on this basis, restored. The DHA opposed the application in the Pretoria High Court, and it was dismissed as the court rejected the DA’s contentions. It also dismissed the DA’s application for leave to appeal.

The DA still took the matter to the SCA on appeal and today it upheld the appeal with costs and declared that s6(1)(a) is inconsistent with the Constitution and invalid from October 6, 1995! It further declared that all citizens who had lost their citizenship on this basis are not deemed to have lost it. The unconstitutionality must now be confirmed by the Constitutional Court before it can take effect and this will likely take several months.

 

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