Tackling the rot in Diepsloot
If we listen to locals and understand the dynamics of the area we’ll discover that the solution to their challenges lies within
IN A COMMENDABLE act that puts God back in the public square, the mayor of Joburg Parks Tau called for a prayer meeting yesterday in Diepsloot. The purpose was to seek divine assistance in the challenges that community faces.
On Sunday, the badly mutilated body of a six-month-old baby was found in her mother’s shack.
This, as the community is still reeling from the murders of three children.
The problems are both spiritual and social.
Something has gone spiritually wrong when people’s actions suggest they are no longer the subjects of the Governor of the Universe who gives life.
The recent incidents in Diepsloot are indeed a reminder of something gone wrong, desperately wrong, in a nation whose preamble to its constitution and whose national anthem recognises God.
When Tau called for the prayer meeting, a number of religious leaders were encouraged and went to Diepsloot to support his initiative. I was one of them.
In his call for prayer, we understood the mayor to be saying we must not wait for the total breakdown of our communities before we bring God and religion back in to the public square.
We understood him to be walking in the footsteps of his forebears who, when times were tough in this land, as they are now tough in Diepsloot, reached down to the recesses of their souls and belted out: Lizalise idinga lakho (fulfil your promise oh God).
We desire His promise – of peace and a better life – to be fulfilled for the community of Diepsloot. Hence the prayer meeting. But the problem is not confined to the spiritual. There is a breakdown of the social fabric when a 23-year-old mother abandons her baby over two days, as is alleged in the latest case, due to her drinking problem.
Child neglect in Diepsloot is reportedly high, with children being born to young mothers with no skill of parenting.
Most of the failure to provide for and look after the children happens because most of the young mothers have no options.
Poverty, worsened by lack in parenting skills, is what leads to the neglect.
There is a lot of intervention needed in that community – from the government to business, religious bodies and NGOs.
But as we intervene, we need to do so in a manner that does not make matters worse.
Simply throwing money and resources at the people of Diepsloot without listening to them and understanding the dynamics of their situation will not help.
It is amazing how much damage has been done by good and well-meaning people who are trying to help the disadvantaged and less privileged. Often, our hearts are in the right place. We try to carry out the injunctions of our various faiths by reaching out to the poor and less privileged with love and giving. As governments, we do the same through our social welfare programmes. All is commendable. But in spite of our good intentions, at times we end up doing more harm than good.
Generosity, when wrongly expressed, can humiliate and even further disempower those who are the targets of our good-willed intentions.
The story is told of European missionaries who went to a village in central Africa with the intention to build a school and a church.
They had their well-devised plan, the financial resources needed to buy the building materials, the necessary tools and a youth group that would build the school and the church with a degree of efficiency that would almost look miraculous to the villagers.
The missionaries did not know that by bringing a group of youngsters to construct the buildings, they were taking construction jobs away from the indigenous villagers who desperately needed work.
At the end of the building projects, the locals were awed by the speed and efficiency with which they were delivered.
But there was an unintended consequence: The villagers were left with an increased sense of inferiority.
Those missionaries contributed to disempowering the people they wanted to help by leaving them with a sense that outsiders were the only ones who could meet their needs or solve their problems.
As we get involved in Diepsloot, let us not be like those missionaries.
Our interventions should not leave the community with a sense that only outsiders can solve their problems.
If we listen to the locals attentively and make it our business to try and understand the dynamics of the area, we will be surprised to discover that the solutions to some of the challenges Diepsloot faces lie within the community.