Alisha's First Impressions and Overview of IJR
We met with the Institute for Justice and reconciliation in Worcester on May 16th and it was an incredible experience. The meeting was for representatives from communities all over South Africa in order to discuss action steps needed after the farm workers strike. Until this day, none of us had heard about the strike—it wasn’t in the American news. The meeting was very informative. I learned that the farm workers began to strike for higher pay in early 2013. The government ended up raising their pay rate. However, the individual farmers who pay these workers decided to compensate for having to pay higher wages by forcing the workers to pay their own medical expenses or electricity. I think this varies from farm to farm, but the end result is that conditions are actually worse for many of the workers after the pay increase.
The meeting began with an introduction about the work of IJR, how they began and what they do. They have a few different branches but we were working with the one that does community healing projects. Stan explained that the four elements of community healing are: 1) acknowledging the past, 2) creating a safe space for understanding, 3) reconciliatory partnerships, and 4) empowering community healing participants. Though all of the elements are important, throughout the meeting, it seemed that most of the participants felt very strongly about the fourth—that people need to be empowered to help themselves.
After the general meeting, we broke into small groups to discuss what steps the community healer representatives believe need to be taken regarding the strike. Kenneth and Stan asked the “American students” (so cute) to take notes. I thought this task was very challenging considering we really do not know very much. However, it was also really informative. The women in our group talked about children who had lost their eyes as a result of police violence during the strikes. In one of these stories the young man was 17 and the woman telling the story explained that he was standing outside where children were throwing rocks as part of the strike but he wasn’t doing anything (not that that should make a difference anyway). A policeman walked up and pointed his gun at the young man’s eye and shot him with a rubber bullet. The boy ended up losing the eye and received no medical services to repair the damage (from what I can tell) so now it is just a big, gaping hole. He feels self-conscious and like his life is over; he won’t go to school anymore, has been drinking and hanging out with gangs. When his mom went to the police station to complain she was turned away and told that he shouldn’t have been throwing rocks so it is really his fault. The story truly broke my heart. We also learned about the poor living conditions in which many of the farm workers live. One of the women in our group said that she has visited the home of one of the workers and it was just one open room for the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom—with no door for the toilet. From this conversation, our group decided that the elements of apartheid that continue to exist need to be addressed—meaning the farm workers are a segregated group and are still living basically under conditions of slavery. The group also thought that people need to be taught to treat others with dignity and it will start by teaching people their rights.
Finally, we came back together to share the main points of what we discussed. Most interesting from that discussion, I thought, was learning that there are a few farms that treat workers humanely and they should be emulated. One other item worth mentioning is how friendly the men and women we met were. They welcomed us and spoke with us individually at the break. We ate dinner with them after (bobotie and yellow rice). Every one of them said good-bye, shook our hands, or hugged and kissed us before they left. Africans have such an amazing, hospitable culture. I am looking forward to meeting more of these wonderful people.
-Alisha