2019’s winter is going to be a long and unpleasant one. In Gwanda South and North where most of MPT’s programs take place, communities are experiencing severe drought. Many households did not harvest a thing from their fields. Between April and August in a normal year communities would be supplementing their meals with produce from their fields; not this year. It is going to be a long chilly winter indeed. The next harvest from the fields that is if decent rains fall will be March to April 2020 ten months away. How will the poorest of the poor survive the next ten months?
In most districts of Matabeleland south water levels of most boreholes have gone down; small dams did not fill up. Small gardens have been abandoned to preserve water for livestock. Reports indicate that Matabeleland south this year is likely to lose 50% of its livestock to drought. The national herd in those areas is already depleted in any case. This means loss of income, loss of a source of livelihood for most communities above all it means loss of hope. We, at Masakhaneni engage communities in discussions about remedies needed to protect communities from the ravages of these droughts. We need permanent solutions to what appears like an ongoing problem. Droughts in this country occur too frequently.
39 years into our independence, the average rural child attends a school most commonly 7 to 10 kilometers away, on an empty stomach, sometimes bare footed, inadequately dressed in this inclement weather. Far too frequently these kids drop out of school having not attained a decent level of education. Some become mothers at fourteen, boys despair and start drinking alcohol at a tender age. No nation can have a firm foundation when its youths lose prospects of contributing to a prosperous future due to lack of skills. No nation prospers when its youths despair and tread the path of self-destruction. This is our country, these are our young people, we owe them a decent future.
The Nqameni Youth Reflection Centre at Sitezi, commissioned on the 7th of May 2019 by the Swedish ambassador is a practical response by MPT working in collaboration with Ukuthula Trust to give the youth a place to reflect on their future, on their roles as citizens. They will be trained in various handy skills designed to enable them to graduate from hopelessness to a glimmer of hope as they begin to imagine a future outside the debilitating experiences of an impoverished rural life with limited options.
In all of MPT’s rural outreach programs, the emphasis is on communities strengthening their collective agency by working together. Collective action reduces misunderstanding and creates common ownership of the outcomes of whatever “project” has been worked on.
We have to raise the consciousness of the communities we work with from being reactive to being pro-active. Poverty is a condition that does not foster forward planning, the hand to mouth phenomenon destroys strategic planning. Our challenge is to always work with communities so that they can see beyond their immediate difficulties. Conflict resolution and management is about the future though the action is taken today.
We face a tough year but the resilience of the communities we work with, will overcome this terrible challenge.