NGOs prop up SA says Prof Jonathan Jansen

NGOs endeavour to keep towns clean, beaches free of plastic, read to foundation-phase children, and develop farming skills among the poor. In fact, the list is endless and growing.

Professor Jonathan Jansen, professor of education at Stellenbosch University (SU) and president of the South African Academy of Science, says the value of the NGO sector cannot be over-emphasised.

“There is a very powerful moral underground that is keeping this country together,” he said at the recent launch of the SU Business School’s postgraduate diploma in leadership development, which has the NPO sector as its core focus.

He added the real value of the sector lay in its capacity to do something different from what government departments do.

“If you are in this space and you simply do what the state has failed to do, then you have lost an opportunity to really make an impact,” he said.

“It’s about innovation, seriously thinking out of the box.”

Yet powerful though it is, Jansen like many others agree that volunteers seldom go looking for the publicity or the support they deserve.

Take a man called Golden, for example, who has no surname, and lives in a far corner of Khayelitsha.

In 1991, he was one of a million desperately poor people arriving in Cape Town setting up shacks across the sand dunes around the city, creating the endless windswept iron shanties we now know as Philippi, Khayelitsha and Blue Downs.

Every day he would walk past piles of rubbish wondering how he could make money to look after himself.

His solution was to retrieve pieces of rubbish from the dumps - everything from tins to plastic milk bottles, and turn them into flowers.

“I worked through the night with scissors and pliers, cutting, bending, rolling, gluing.

“I only had candlelight, but in the morning I had made my first daisy.”

That early experiment using stuff that people had chucked out was the start of a business that has kept his family out of poverty for several years and has been featured on the Travel Channel and TV shows in Europe.

His flowers are now exported.

But more than that, Golden - still with no surname - has decided that he should volunteer his skills to teach the children living near him in Khayelitsha, to start their own flower businesses.

“First, they collect the litter, which means less rubbish in the environment, and then they start designing and cutting.

“It is wonderful to see them so happy and being creative. I am happy to give my time.”

It’s this same power of giving that infuses the hundreds of NGOs offering their services for free in South Africa, many of them working in the overstrained education sector.

In the Western Cape, Action Volunteers Africa based in Wynberg focuses on unlocking the potential of unemployed youth (18-25 years) through training and placing them in full-time volunteering positions in a variety of scenarios, while Shine Literacy has volunteers teaching young children to read and appreciate literature in dozens of under-resourced schools.

Professor Arnold Smit, programme co-ordinator of the new leadership development programme and head of USB’s Social Impact network said: “We strive to be responsible leaders who work with others to enhance quality of life, create a spirit of generosity, and work for a fair and just society.

“Everywhere you go, no matter what the sector, there are NGOs making a massive contribution to our social fabric.”

And if one needs more persuasion that ordinary people giving up their time for nothing have a valuable part to play in today’s troubled society, go no further than the Vuvuzela Angels of Soweto, whose generosity of spirit was highlighted in a radio news programme this week.

Their contribution in the light of gender-based violence towards women is to sound their vuvuzelas to let women know that they will accompany them in safety to and from work and to remain with them at the hot spot transport stops.

Jansen believes that leadership in this sector is a priority.

“I have given up on the government. I believe we have crossed over into a very dark space” he said.

“The real value of the NPO sector lies in its capacity to do something completely different.”