DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

Yesterday, I had the fortunate opportunity to attend a Parliamentary debate about municipal services delivery. Under normal circumstances, I would call most political talk of water, sanitation, electricity, and emergency management relatively boring from a civilian perspective. At home in the U.S., I rarely give any thought as to whether there is safe drinking water pouring from the tap or if the toilet will flush. While I understand that my family certainly pays a utility bill, I take it for granted that these services are at least available for purchase in nearly every American community.

However, for the past two weeks, my work at the Black Sash has helped me to understand that even in what is largely considered a relatively “developed” country, huge numbers of people still do not have access to these basic services. To put things in perspective, the South African government hopes to provide universal access to sanitation and safe water by 2011 and 2030 respectively. 2030. That is still 21 years from now. And recent studies show that it is doubtful that the government will succeed in meeting these distant goals.

What I have come to learn at the Black Sash is that service delivery is a basic human rights issue. If people do not have available bathrooms and clean water, how can they maintain their dignity as human beings? The answer is simple: they can’t. For South Africa, a nation that prides itself on its progressive commitment to the promotion of human rights, a real commitment must be made to the exploration of practical development strategies for the provision of services to townships and informal settlements, as they exist today. Now that I understand the importance of service provision to the realization of socio-economic rights, these political discussions of municipal responsibility and budgetary concerns have taken on new meaning. I hope that the new South African government under President Jacob Zuma feels the same sense of urgency around these issues that has grown within me in my time at the Black Sash.
 

This week, I began my work at the Black Sash, a prominent NGO focused on achieving the realization of human rights as promised by the extraordinarily progressive South African Constitution. For now, it seems that my days will consist mainly of policy research, archival work, and logistical coordination for upcoming conferences. The most interesting aspect of my time here so far has been the informal conversations with my employer and coworkers. For example, while I was sorting through piles of old historical documents in storage at the Black Sash, I spoke with one woman about her experience as a young Indian girl growing up in a rural community outside of Durban. She candidly explained that as a child, race in her community (even under the stringent segregation of the apartheid regime) was a non-issue. Although she was Indian, she played frequently with children of all colors because they all shared the common background of a rural upbringing. When she married her husband and moved to Cape Town for his work as a structural engineer, however, this young woman was immediately struck by the blatant racial divisions readily apparent in the urban setting. She explained that under apartheid, non-whites had been removed from the city’s interior and that the residual tension of this removal was still palpable, even 15 years after the end of legal segregation. Ultimately, she concluded that she frequently can’t relate to many of the stories that her peers tell of the humiliations of discrimination because she herself simply does not have such memories or experiences to draw from.
 This story reminded me that even when people have experiences different than those of the general collective, those stories are still valid and actually vital to gaining a more complete understanding of a situation. One thing that has confronted me here is the idea that some people have a better understanding of the world than others, that some people’s ideas are more relevant or legitimate. This is not at all true. The minute we dismiss alternative views, we lose the opportunity to enrich our own perspectives and to learn from each other. I am excited to learn from the experiences of my coworkers in the coming weeks and to allow their stories to enrich my grasp of the world.