After calls, letters, emails, discussions with Joburg Connect, the Health Department, Ekhaya City Improvement District, the City Environmental Agency, the Area City Counsellor, Pikitup, Selby Depo and then finally the Municipal Manager, they heard...




 

No items found.

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After calls, letters, emails, discussions with Joburg Connect, the Health Department, Ekhaya City Improvement District, the City Environmental Agency, the Area City Counsellor, Pikitup, Selby Depo and then finally the Municipal Manager, they heard...




 

No items found.

 



After calls, letters, emails, discussions with Joburg Connect, the Health Department, Ekhaya City Improvement District, the City Environmental Agency, the Area City Counsellor, Pikitup, Selby Depo and then finally the Municipal Manager, they heard...




 

No items found.

 

Our 4 kids went to Kids' Week today ( first week of the July school holidays) hosted by MES Aksie at the Lutheran Church in Hillbrow. The programme starts at 9 each day from Tuesday to Saturday with tea and biscuits, followed by activities in the hall together, then lunch, then craft and drama, ending at 3pm. Kids' concert on Saturday...


Hannah waiting in the queue for morning tea...


Jordan and Daniel loving all their new friends!

Met a lady this week from the 17th floor of the building opposite us. The lifts no longer work. She has a 6 year old daughter living with her, barely survives every month on a very small disability grant (R1050) for a medical condition. It takes 30 minutes to walk up the 17 floors with her daughter. She does this twice a day, once to take her daughter to creche, and once to fetch her...Hard times!

This morning the Hillbrow clinic OT and physio section (2 blocks away from our flat) threw a thank you party for all those who helped paint and furnish their paediatric rehab room, to which we were invited! Hannah also gave them her wooden rocking horse (from her 2nd birthday) which a friend kindly fixed up. It was amazing to be part of it all and join in a class with the staff for about 7 children between the ages of 2 and 13 with cerebral palsy! These 3 young ladies are so motivated!


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Fire truck has responded to the burning rubbish across the road from our flat

Jordan, in front of the "Simakade" (forever standing) monument where we laid some flowers this morning, while on a tour of the inner city remembering June 16, 1976. The tour was arranged by Past Experiences, and looked at apartheid resistance in the city. This monument is outside the Joburg Central Police station (formerly John Vorster Square). Many children who participated in the June 16 protests were imprisoned, questioned and tortured here. It is also the police station where Steve Biko died. The monument remembers those who kept standing against apartheid in spite of the incredible difficulties they faced.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVQbv6BWing]
On 21 March 2012, Human Rights Day in South Africa, our family visited Sharpville to learn more about what had happened there. On the 21 March 1960, 60 people were killed and over 200 people injured as police opened fire on a peaceful crowd who were coming to hand themselves over to the police as they has left their pass books at home as a non violent protest action against caring pass books.
What we found on our visit was a community who felt neglected. The SA government has moved the commemoration of the day away from this historic site to Soweto. The people we spoke to were still deep in poverty and many not part of the economic mainstream. The PAC has arranged it's own commemoration with the community.
I spoke to a man who had lost his uncle in the masacre. He said that no one has apologized to him or his family for what happened on that day.
Our family was quite touched by the events and left wondering what our role could be in the new South Africa. Surely we, as white middle class South Africans have a role to play in breaking these chains of poverty, in speaking up on behalf of the poor and the oppressed and in ensuring that we have a more just and equitable society.


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​I have just written a letter to the Johannesburg Municipal manager to ask him to remove the rubbish on the plot of land opposite where we live. This is after first reporting it to Joburg connect on 25 March, and then to the pickitup local depo, and then to the city health department, and then to the city environmental agency. No one has responded yet.
Apparently the land is owned by the city. People are trying to get rid of the rubbish by burning it which is very unhealthy for the nearly 10,000 people who breathe in the air directly around the plot of land. In addition we have a massive rat infestation caused by this which is also a public health risk. The city has not replaced the pickitup waste removal vehicle for Hillbrow which apparently broke down a long time ago which is also why waste on the streets is left for days. We now share a vehicle with another neighboring suburb so waste collection is irregular to say the least.
This is all happening in the most densely populated part of South Africa where the poorest of the poor live. If anyone should have a clean environment, it is areas like this where huge numbers of people are affected.

In 1999, a group of concerned musicians came together to uplift a community by sharing their skills with some children on the property of a Lutheran church. The city was Joburg, the community was Hillbrow and surrounding suburbs, and the music school was the one right across the road from where we now live! Today we met most of the music teachers, perused their daily music teaching schedule, enrolled two of our kids to start lessons there next term, and attended a concert this evening in which their students performed together with about 5 other schools at a nearby, affluent Joburg school...inspirational they were!
(We also decided I would volunteer as a music teacher at the Hillbrow Music school every week on a Wednesday afternoon starting on 20th June...)

Today we went out to Trinity House where we collected scarves, baby clothes and blankets that some classes of boys and girls had knitted together with baby food and supplies that they had collected for our work into the Inner City. These will probably go to the Central Methodist Church to help them with the many poor foreigners they house within their walls. What is most amazing about these gifts is the great love that has gone into each item. "Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love" Mother Theresa.