Theresa: Organize or Starve

 The past two days, I have been able to experience Cape Town at it’s finest. On Wednesday, despite concern about the ability to find transport due to strikes, one of my co-educators Meika and I ventured into the city to participate in a march held by Cosatu (The Congress of South African Trade Unions.)  As we ventured down into the train station, we immediately saw marchers and protestors with their signs, shirts, banners and tangible passion and energy. Immediately we were swept into the crowd and joined the ranks of laborers, teachers, nurses, store clerks, textile workers, union leaders, NGO workers and many more who were there to lend their support to the march.  We walked through the city and met up with the larger crowd and found ourselves in the dead front of the march. As we stood and waited for the command to surge onward, the organizers sat on a truck and worked to rally the crowd with protest songs, chants and calls to action.  Meika and I were unable to gauge the amount of people gathered for the march, but reports afterwards say that 13,000 Capetonians and people from the Western Cape joined in the protest, half the amount the organizers were expecting.   The crowd was surrounded by police in riot gear, their arms, chests, and legs covered in shell-like protection with large clear shields and guns in holsters.

            

As we swelled forward, I was overcome with emotion. The people surrounding us were mostly black, mostly ANC supporters, and all just asking to be treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve as human beings.  The struggle is not over, this post-apartheid government is not fulfilling the needs of the people.  Fair wages, decent work, education, reasonably priced transportation, basic health care- the necessities and basics of life, nothing extravagant, nothing excessive.  One of the sentiments expressed on shirts, buttons and hats was- Organize or Starve.  How poignant but an expression. Let us work together, collectively organize ourselves and we can be powerful beyond our wildest imaginations. What cannot be ignored is that the phrase is also wrought with urgency, we have no choice, it is imperative for our survival that we work together, we need to push past whatever differences we may have, whatever dissenting opinions exist, embrace our oneness and understand that if we don’t, we my cease to exist.

            

As a foreigner, as one of the only white faces in the crowd; there were times I felt like an imposter and an outsider.  Who am I to be riled up with passion over living wages, when I spend most of my life living in the lap of luxury.  When I go to an ATM, I could easily and repeatedly pull out the average monthly salary of a person here.  But my guilt, my discomfort do nothing unless I use it as motivation, to feel, to empathize, to use my privileges to make someone else’s existence more comfortable.  As the speeches wrapped up, and we, along with the crowd started to disperse, and everyone began their search for water (we had all been standing in the sweltering midday heat, crowded together for hours).  As we hastily looked through coolers for beverages in a minimart, a man noticed our placards and bodies covered in bumper stickers, and he approached us, “Thank you for joining us comrades.” And  there it was, the affirmation for our attendance, for the presence of everyone there. We are comrades, we are all comrades, working for the same aims of a just, peaceful world.