Facilitators go through their paces during a community conversation in Yeoville
January 28, 2009 – The 32 facilitators piloting the new community conversation series of the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Dialogue Programme, have got their first taste of an actual conversation.
In partnership with a number of different organisations, this series of dialogues looks to promote peaceful co-existence in communities shared by residents of different nationalities.
Set to continue for the next two years, in all nine of South Africa’s provinces, the community conversations aim to create a space for people to express their concerns and opinions on issues around the co-existence of different nationalities and for them to identify solutions themselves.
The January event was held at St Aidan’s Church in Yeoville, a Johannesburg suburb, which is home to people from many African countries.
St Aidan’s is no stranger to this type of dialogue, explained Father Neo Motlabane, who oversees the parish.
“We have worked very hard to be part of this community and we are constantly getting involved in projects around here,” he said. “We held a dialogue here last year in partnership with the Yeoville Stakeholder Forum and the African Diaspora Forum.”
Maurice Smithers, a representative of the Yeoville Stakeholders Forum, said the community saw the 2008 dialogue as “the beginning of a process … so we are very excited about this series of dialogues.”
The session began with the participants being encouraged to introduce themselves to someone they didn’t know. The aim of the exercise is for the participants to find out each other’s names, strengths and weaknesses, and general interests.
Having broken the ice, the group members were then asked to individually reflect on the last 15 years, a ‘Historical Timeline’, in which they focused on significant events and how they, as individual community members, experienced them.
The participants then broke into groups to discuss their reflections which were written down and then shared with the rest of the participants.
“The aim of this exercise is to focus on the concerns and feelings that the members of the community have had over the last 15 years and how those events and feelings have affected them,” said facilitator Elroy Paulus.
Participants who came to live in South Africa from other African countries spoke of living in fear in the last 15 years. They highlighted issues like crime, police brutality, isolation, hatred and racism.
After the feedback session the facilitators guided the community through another exercise called ‘Exploring Concerns’ to try to find the underlying causes of the problems that had been raised and the beliefs that had given rise to them.
They concluded that insecurity was the main reason for these feelings. The community felt, it was caused by poverty, no guarantee of protection from the police, a little public awareness and a lack of re-integration, which in turn led to anger, frustration and potential violence.
Having reflected upon what they had learnt, the community then stood, joined hands and sang together: “A friend on my left is a friend on my right, viva la compagnie (‘long live the community’), viva la, viva la, viva la l’amour (‘long live love’).”
Participants at the event were encouraged to express their feelings during the conversation
Members of the conversation listen intently to what’s being said
Having reflected on their past, participants wrote down what they thought the major issues were