Green Shoots: Solidarity – extending the love beyond our borders

My reflections last week about the very individual and personal acts of solidarity that people are doing every day caught the attention of a radio show on SAfm.  I was interviewed early on Saturday morning while walking with the Pirates Club in Joburg to raise awareness for breast cancer. It’s a good thing we were done with the hills or radio listeners would have been treated to a lot of huffing and puffing. 

I ended last week’s column with a statement that solidarity is about so much more than simply charity - it is a radical expression of love for those who are in distress. The workshop a couple of weeks ago that prompted these reflections also invited community organisers and activists to share what was happening in their countries.

People from Swaziland spoke about the iron grip that Africa’s last absolute monarch has on the country, and how he and his family continue to get obscenely rich even as poverty and unemployment rise.

Have you noticed that Trump hasn’t announced any tariffs for Swaziland? I doubt it’s coincidence that the USA is deporting prisoners to the country, causing all sorts of worry among locals about their capacity to safely keep dangerous criminals. The gains made for the protection of women and children through excellent legislation are being rolled back by patriarchal and misogynist behaviour by members of the elite, and the traditional Tinkundla system of government is not designed to foster accountability. Political parties remain banned, and outspoken opponents like human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko are simply assassinated when they become a threat. 

There’s a lot happening in Mozambique, too, as the ruling party refuses to listen to the discontent of the people. Over 400 people died in the post-election protests this time last year, and there remain over 2 500 people in detention since then. There have been 10 000 job losses since the crisis began, and this is impacting the ability of people to continue to protest as they battle poverty.

In South Africa, we know about the struggle against crime and violence. The gangsterism in Cape Town and Joburg affects ordinary people. Housing struggles make it hard for people to live in dignity, while the onslaught on women is at epidemic proportions. The country is in danger of normalising such a violent existence. It is not helped by a political class that seems to thrive on corruption.

The need to enable ordinary people to hold power to account has never been more urgent. And of course, there is the lawlessness of opportunistic xenophobic activities that distracts people from the real culprits – the political and economic elites. The Gen Z movement in Madagascar kept their focus in ousting its corrupt leaders. I hope they can navigate the dangers that come with military intervention.

One of the panellists at the workshop made the point that the Southern African region has a long and proud history of solidarity.  This legacy is probably shaped in part  by us being late in achieving freedom from colonial and apartheid powers, and the need for unity in resistance to the then SA Defence Force and its aggressive bombing and other incursions into neighbouring countries. 

We have to rekindle that spirit and practice of solidarity between our nations. That solidarity helped us achieve our freedom in 1994, but we appear to have forgotten how to do it in the naive belief that we were done with struggle. It is the very liberation movements that still dominate the regional political landscape that need a robust wake-up call from the people. We have to remind them that accountable governance is what is needed if we are to thrive. We should learn how the Gen Z crowd in Madagascar, Kenya and Bangladesh has been doing it.

The challenge is how we expand the idea of solidarity as an act of love to reach those beyond our immediate surroundings. It has to be expressed even for those we don’t see in front of us – the people of the region, of Gaza, of Sudan.

South Africans benefited immensely from the love of solidarity that was shown by our African neighbours, by ordinary people all over the world. We should be thinking hard about how we return that gift of love by finding ways to be in solidarity with our neighbours and beyond.