Klein Karoo Connect visits Spensplaas, De Rust

Today three members from Klein Karoo Connect visited Spensplaas outside De Rust. Below are some thoughts about this experience.
Yesterday 15 July the Daily Maverick referred to the results of the first authoritative study of its kind focusing on the economic impact of the pandemic on South Africans. Dr Nic Spaull led the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey and worked with the country’s top-rated researchers and economists. “All of us were numbed. It is devastating and upsetting,” said Spaull. One of the key findings of the study was that 47% of household ran out of money to buy food (read - going hungry). In 2019 this figure was 21%. The Greater Oudtshoorn region is increasingly staggering under the double-blow of Covid-19 and lockdown.
Living in a developing country implies that its citizens cannot necessarily (only) rely on the government to provide sufficient relief. Community action to initiate projects and to provide support to public initiatives are also necessary / essential.
Contributing to effective food relief is a priority for Klein Karoo Connect. Community farming has sparked Bernard le Roux’s interest due to the empowerment (teaching a man how to fish) that takes place during these projects. It was on his suggestion that we travelled to visit Spensplaas outside De Rust this morning - he told us that he read about Spensplaas on social media and it seemed that they were doing something right. On a cold winter’s morning with snow on the Swartberg mountains we arrived at Spensplaas.
Arriving at Spensplaas had me thinking about Dutch historian Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A hopeful history, a book that I’ve recently finished. A central tenet of Bregman’s book is to argue that spontaneous, collective cooperation for our common good is a special human superpower. Bregman argues that we have mistakenly been manipulated into believing that kindness and compassion are the less common choice for humans to make. He warns how we mostly operate from this faulty position of distrust with far-reaching negative consequences. We trap each other into cycles of negative self-fulfilling prophecies, always preventing us from becoming more human (Paolo Freire).
Bregman cites research of how a large part of modern society’s workforce is trapped in doing “bullshit”(please excuse my French:-) jobs - jobs where the worker knows that my work is only for material gain and doing this adds no value to society (and to my own feeling of self-worth). What I experienced at Spensplaas was in absolute contrast to this. Project Leader Catherine shared with us her immense sense of flow - of how things were naturally falling into place (Jung would call it synchronicity); geography teacher and lecturer Peter about the value of connection -groundedness to the soil and experiencing where food comes from; Lindie, from nearby, about the miracle of learning to bring forth life in a seemingly unforgiving landscape; Jeffry who teaches us appreciating the value of trying. Each individual was so clearly energised by meaningfully being part of something bigger than themselves.
If you want to join Klein Karoo Connect and become part of a local community farm project, please send a private message.

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Absolutely brilliant it is so fantastic to see South African stepping up and practicing Ubuntu