SASVO volunteers repair a school in Mozambique damaged by floods. |
South
African university students are flocking to the country’s main volunteering organization
with the promise of fun, manual labour and a radical change in African politics
It may not be everyone’s
idea of a perfect holiday, but France Montwedi had the adventure of his life. From
South Africa, the student of natural sciences took a bus to Maputo, capital of Mozambique.
With 11 other volunteers, he was then led to a nearby village, deserted since last
year’s floods, and given his tasks: mixing mortar, learning Portuguese, swatting
mosquitoes and reconstructing the community’s school building.
Set up in 1993 under the auspices of the Centre for Human Rights at the University
of Pretoria, the Southern African Student Volunteers Organization (Sasvo) has become
a pioneering body for community action across the region. Working in poverty-stricken
areas, the organization has sent out groups of students to spend part of their vacations
on projects and fill some of the gaps left by under-resourced governments.
But the organization is not just about good works, as Montwedi’s experience goes
to prove. “We get a lot of students participating–mainly black students who’d otherwise
have to stay at home over the summer because they are not so wealthy. For them it’s
an enormously beneficial experience to go and work in rural areas of southern Africa,”
explains Jan Bezuidenhout, Sasvo’s deputy co-ordinator.
For Christoff Heyns, a founding member and director of the Centre for Human Rights,
the initiative is a crucial step towards reaffirming young people’s African identity
and sense of belonging. “I believe that if you mix sweat with earth, you get ownership
of that land. And if you mix sweat with the sweat of others, you get joint ownership.”
His hope is that Sasvo may one day lay the groundwork for a pan-continental volunteering
body. “If there is a problem in Rwanda or Mozambique, the first people to arrive
to offer assistance should be Africans,” he says.
From
building to counselling
So
far, however, Sasvo is the only indigenous South African organization promoting voluntary
action among university students and young people in rural and disadvantaged communities.
To date, more than 6,000 student volunteers from 40 academic institutions in 10 African
countries have undertaken participatory community development projects in South Africa,
Swaziland, Mozambique, Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda and Namibia.
Although South African youth have a proud history of activism–they were at the forefront
of the struggle against apartheid–Heyns says voluntary action is a different challenge.
“Activism is primarily focused on political issues. While voluntarism doesn’t exclude
this, it includes non-political activities like working in a hospice or educating
people about issues like AIDS.”
Since 1996, the organization’s primary focus has been on schools: they have renovated
over 40, built some 214 classrooms, and painted more than 800 others as well as four
children’s hospital wards. But student volunteers have also built houses, community
centres and sports fields, and planted vegetable gardens and trees. They have done
disaster relief work, run human rights education workshops, assisted with the general
elections in South Africa and taken statements for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Future projects are expected to focus more on HIV/AIDS awareness, counselling and
agricultural projects
In the opinion of its organizers, Sasvo’s greatest accomplishment has been to instil
in volunteers and community members alike ideals of self-reliance, self-help, voluntarism
and love of Africa through projects that help to secure access to education and services
for all–access that would otherwise be impossible to guarantee. As Bezuidenhout sees
it, the volunteers’ experiences may as a result prove critical in beginning to bridge
the divide that has traditionally separated Africa’s political elite from those who
are ruled.
“The problem in Africa had always been that once people get to power, they loose
contact with those they were meant to serve. But volunteers will always remember
their time working in a rural community,” he explains.
Bridging
the class divide
Projects
have indeed been marked by stronger links between the organizers and the communities
they are seeking to serve. “At first, our volunteers would arrive in communities
and commence with the work that needed doing. Nowadays, by the time our volunteers
arrive, the community already has the materials and the plans. They have ownership
of their projects and we provide the sweat,” Heyns says.
Meanwhile, adds Bezuidenhout, village people and volunteers–some of whom are likely
to become political and business leaders in the decades to come–have time and the
opportunity during their work to debate issues of pressing concern. “They talk about
human rights issues or about gender issues. It creates links between illiterate and
semi-literate people, and university students who might themselves have grown up
in such villages.”
In 1997, Sasvo made its first move towards collaborative ventures and piloted its
Operation Zenzele (“Do it yourself”) Project. This focused more specifically on upgrading,
renovation and repair of the socio-economic infrastructure (particularly of schools)
in disadvantaged communities in conjunction with township youth and secondary school
learners. Advice on which communities to target within South Africa often comes from
the government, whose ministries work closely with the organization.
In addition, Sasvo offers longer-term opportunities for graduates to work in development
projects where they can gain experience and practical skills in their field of study
or interest. Volunteers also have the option of working for NGOs and international
agencies. More than 19 long-term placements have been made.
With branches at seven universities in southern Africa, there is no shortage of students
waiting to enrol. “We have so many people applying for our projects that we do not
see the necessity of building a large infrastructure,” says Sasvo project coordinator
Belinda Mogashwa. “We would prefer not to spend money on management and offices;
instead we want to plough in money and resources where they are needed most: in destitute
communities.” |
