A street view in Platfontein near Kimberley in South Africa's Northern Cape Province In the summer of 2017 I got an opportunity to visit South Africa and two San communities at Platfontein, Kimberley and at Rosedale, Upington. I spent a whole month in exchange as a member of PARTY project. PARTY comes from words Participatory development with the youth and it is a EU funded, international and inter-sectoral research and innovation programme that aims to “endorse human development and assist in reducing youth unemployment by increasing the involvement and inclusion of young people in service development in South Africa and Namibia by using participatory and explorative service design tools”. The project is focusing on San youth and young adults that are “living in poor or otherwise marginal conditions and who either are or face the risk of becoming marginalized”. San People and the Settlement of Platfontein The San, historically referred to as ‘Bushman’, are the aboriginal people of South Africa. Their hunter-gatherer culture goes back over 20 000 years. The San are the oldest genetic stock of contemporary humanity. Today, the two largest San groups in South Africa (!Xû and Khwe) are immigrants from Angola via Namibia. I will focus here on San living in Platfontein, which was the main location for our field work. Platfontein is the collective name for the !Xun and Khwe San communities residing in a settlement on the barren farm, approximately 10 kilometers north-west of Kimberley, Northern Cape. The community of about 7 000 inhabitants lives in small and modest brick houses, which the South African government built for them for their contribution to the Namibian War of Independence in the 70´s. In Platfontein the basic services that are available are a school, two shops, a municipal building and a health clinic. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has a radio station located in Platfontein. Own radio station has a great importance to the Sans and they are free to visit the station and participate in the making of radio programs also in their own languages. Unemployment in the community is extremely high and poverty is acute, visible and debilitating. Primary sources of income are child support and disability grants on which the individuals or families cannot survive. The increases in food prices have caused hunger, malnourishment and diseases. Alcoholism is a common problem, as is domestic violence, teenage pregnancies and HIV. Suicide as a cause of death is out of proportion to its population within this small settlement. San culture and identity are disappearing as well as are their own languages. This is due to the fact that Afrikaans and English are the main languages used at schools and public services. Workshops and Data Collecting Above mentioned realities formed a compelling framework to our visit and field work as a form of workshops with the San youth. Even though the statistics and frameworks might seem depressing, the youth we met had prospects for the future. They had plans and dreams and some of them were soon to start studies in various educational institutions outside Platfontein. The youth welcomed us warmly to their community and participated actively in the workshops. During our stay, we organised workshops in which the youth did poster design, designed art from trash, shared their culture and traditional habits, did storytelling, community walking and prepared a play, which was performed publicly at Platfontein´s school yard. The aim of these workshops was to recognize the strengths of the young people and the challenges they are facing, to find channels for developing models for creating local dialogue. More far reaching aim was to identify possibilities for youth employment. This is not an easy objective to reach in a community where unemployment rises over 90 percent, where jobs are few and public transportation to the nearest city, Kimberley, or anywhere else is practically non-existing. A San Family home and a pop up store for handmade crafts (Platfontein) The big question is, as it´s always with the projects that are temporary, periodical or which do not originate from the community, whether they can help San youth and more widely their community and culture. What does PARTY project have to offer to these young people it manages to reach with the help of local gate keepers like The South African San Institute (SASI) and local contact persons? One answer and what we were doing was to emphasize the importance of one's own culture and identity. That San youth can be proud of their history and traditions. Besides this abstract aim, we introduced to the youth some practical and hopefully useful tools or ideas to be used in the future. These tangible tools were making posters in which you can present shortly and in an informative way your ideas etc. Using trash as a material for art increases environmental awareness and shows that in making art you can reclaim materials that are easily available and free. Using drama as a tool for representing various kinds of societal or political themes opens a different kind of forum for a local dialogue. Community mapping in turn is a nice method to pay attention, learn more or enhance belonging to places and spaces in one´s own community. Besides running workshops with the youth, we collected different kind of research data. This data consists for example of artifacts made in the workshops (posters, art, maps) and recordings at the workshops, during the community walking and the theatre rehearsals and performance. From the point of view of social sciences and social work this first exchange in South Africa was fruitful and thought-provoking. Platfontein is a unique place and the current situation of the San people in South Africa rises societal, equality-related and other ethical questions, not to mention welfare or health issues. This community gives a social scientist a “lapful” of themes and questions to research. My exploration will continue in next September when I`ll return to Kimberley. Traditional San dance as a part of the theatre performance (Platfontein school)
Tarja Juvonen PhD (Soc.Sc), University lecturer (tl) University of Lapland Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland References Khomani Desert San – Northern Cape, South Africa Osoitteessa: https://khomani.co.za/ Oatway, James (2013) Lost Crows: Fighting for survival after fighting for the apartheid war machine. In: http://www.osisa.org/fr/openspace/south-africa/lost-crows-fighting-survival-after-fighting-apartheid-war-machine https://www.ulapland.fi/EN/Webpages/PARTY van Wyk, As (2014) The militarisation of the Platfontein San (!Xun and Khwe): The initial years 1966–1974. The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 10(3), 133-151 Comments are closed.
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