Connectivity Meeting, Sunday 6 September 2009

We met at the home of Queen Madiba with 10 people:
Queen Madiba – Founding Class 1 teacher at the Sikhulise Waldorf School, Soweto in 1992 (now closed). Currently working at the Inkanyesi Waldorf School, Alexandra.
Mapule Tsolo – Also taught at Sikhulise and now at Inkanyesi
Ellen Mndende – Past student at Inkanyesi, now working at a travel agency handling timeshares
Reason Matshavha – Past student, Inkanyesi, working in another travel agency
Tshepo Madiba – Brother of Queen, past student of McGregor Waldorf, a community school in McGregor in the Western Cape.
Leticia Rheingantz, Jara von Lüpke, Jozefien Poppe, Eric Hurner.
Apologies from Thandi Hlatshwayo.
The meeting was to bring together a few people who had already heard about the idea of organising a Connectivity conference in South Africa, so that we could find out what everyone wanted and how they related to the idea.
We met over lunch, people began to talk warm to one another and after eating, we presented the underlying ideas behind Idem and Connectivity. Both Queen and Mapule had been centrally involved in the organising of a series of youth conferences that took place in Johannesburg in the first half of the ‘90s. This experience still lives very strongly in the people who took part at the time – the excitement of taking and seeing through an initiative, the relationships that formed between people and to the work they still do today. On the other hand, the younger people who have started out in professional life miss the real identity of their own person with what they do every day and were excited by the idea of working together with others in this manner.
Their seemed to be an immediate connection and friendship that sparked off between the young people from Europe and those from South Africa and at the end of the meeting everyone expressed their feeling of participating in the preparatory work.

Vuka Design

Contact person: Paola Riemann
Address: P.O. Box 3628, Cresta 2118, South Africa
Fax; 011 782 7331
Vuka Design works at the Johannesburg School for the Deaf, training youths in blacksmithing and other crafts. Besides this, they supervise a network of woman who are working with paper craft. It is founded and run by Paola Riemann.
Paola Riemann has been interested in the Connectivity idea since hearing about it some time before the Kgotla Conference, where she then attended a workshop given by Valentin Vollmer. She gave a workshop in blacksmithing herself at that conference and has done numerous workshops and organised a variety of traing programmes in various crafts, but predominantly in metalwork. She is currently completing her Master’s in Sculpture.
She is interested in being part of, and helping to coordinate meetings to set up the network that is to organise the Connectivity conference. Besides this she wishes to be part of the network that is putting together the Craft Village.

The Inkanyezi Waldorf School – Alexandra, Johannesburg

Inkanyesi celebrated its 21st birthday last year, being founded with a first grade in 1988 as the first of the Waldorf schools established within the black communities of South Africa. At the time of its founding, the struggle for freedom and democracy in South Africa was reaching a peak, various political parties were beginning to form and Alexandra Township was an overcrowded and dangerous area.
A Kindergarten with 3 teachers was already working, and the first grade was started in the garage of one of the teachers. There were very few children, the only source of light and air was the door, which opened directly onto the street. So Theo Thorne, the teacher, placed a chair on the street so that anyone who wanted to watch what he was doing could do so.
Soon a site was acquired, first buildings built and in 1991, theses included the Baobab Community College, a centre to train teachers for the growing number of schools in these communities – Soweto, Madietane, Winterton, Irene and Inkanyesi itself.
Much has happened since then, the school has grown, but is still struggling financially and in finding its real place within the whole scope of South African Education.
A number of the teachers there were involved in the first part of the ‘90’s in planning and running the youth conferences that took place in South Africa at the time, culminating in the Ubuntu Conference of 1995, where we received some 300 international visitors as well.
We met with them to connect up once again and to see how to pick up the Connectivity idea here in Johannesburg. Further meetings were planned and everyone seemed very interested to join in the process in some way.

Keiskamma Trust, Hamburg

Website: www.keiskamma.org
Contact persons: Unathi Meslane Community and Public Relations Manager
Carol Hofmeyr Trust Director

The Keiskamma Trust was founded by Dr Carol Hofmeyr, who set up the Art Project and the Keiskamma Health Program. The first of these engages a large number of women manufacturing articles incorporating traditional crafts, and the second runs a treatment centre and hospice mainly for HIV/Aids patients.
Related projects are the Keiskamma Educational Program with runs a Kindergarten and is building up the Heritage Village around it.
The whole initiative is described in detail on their Homepage www.keiskamma.org.
The village of Hamburg lies by the sea between the cities of Port Elisabeth and East London. The Keiskamma Project, since its inception, has made a lot of difference to the lives of the local community. This is what we can learn about and help to support in some small way.
Possible Activities
The Heritage Village is in the process of development and they would like to build a couple of traditional adobe rondavel huts, so as to demonstrate traditional building methods and styles, as well as to provide accommodation for visitors to the project, and possibly a small restaurant.
There is also a need for a hut or small building to accommodate a few orphan children that have been given shelter by the project but there are no proper facilities at the moment to house them.

Nomphumelelo

The Kindergarten started in 1987 when Phusana Duma began to work with children in her own home. She moved out when her husband bought the home they are currently living in and the kindergarten continued on their old site.
In 1993, a German kindergarten teacher, Elke Stöbe, came to South Africa and began to help with educational aspects. She also organised funding through Germany which allowed the project to develop to its present form.
Nompumelelo has around 120 children and employs 7 teachers, a number of whom are studying at the Centre for Creative Education at the same time.
Phumsana has worked with European volunteers for some years, who find a place to stay in her own home and help at the kindergarten. She also provides asylum for a number of orphaned children – I counted around 6 – who live within the warm family atmosphere she provides. These children receive funding in order to attend the Zenzeleni Waldorf School nearby, but she provides for their accommodation and food herself.
A new wing has just been added to her house where guests can find comfortable beds, and a shower is being installed downstairs. We were very well received and cared for and see the work she does and her warm, caring personality as providing an environment in which children and young people can thrive.
Work to be done:
1. Stabilise annex to new building and reconstruct roof with an overhang behind and possibly a covered veranda in front to stop water seeping into the walls.
2. Brick paving over parts of the yard.
3. There is a need for playground equipment, including swings, sandpit, tyre constructions and so on.
4. Phumsana want to purchase the adjoining property in the corner so that she can clear the shack in front and adapt the house to her needs. Money for this would have to be raised.
5. A small area behind the toilets in the main block could be landscaped and made into a play area
6. General repairs an renovations are needed on doors and windows, paintwork and so on.

Bonintwentle Workcamp ends

With the end of the Workcamp in Mount Frere, the attention is now focused on the next part of the journey - establishing relations with people and projects who are interested in being part of the organisation and work of the Connectivity Conference 2011, or of Idem in South Africa in general.

Some of these are already there, others will be added as we go along.

We visited 2 new projects before arriving in Mount Frere. The reports on these follow: