How are ordinary people showing up in your community?

Maverick Citizens
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From filling potholes to securing substations and maintaining parks, Joburgers are taking matters into their own hands to revive their city. This “DIY revolution” shows incredible community spirit and commitment to a better South Africa, and this kind of civic action isn’t unique to Joburg. Have you or your community engaged in similar initiatives, and what were the outcomes? We’d like to hear about it.

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Kidds Beach is a small coastal village outside East London. The village has grown exponentially with new developments over the past 15 years but Buffalo City Municipality services have reduced or become non-existent. For a number of years we have tried working with the municipality in areas such as infrastructure upgrades, maintenance and community services, but this has not resulted in any changes. The Ratepayers Association will be forming a Home Owners Association for the “ungated” community. The HOA struc­ture will be respons­ible for filling the gap between the ser­vices provided by BCM and a reas­on­able stand­ard of ser­vices required. This plan formalises the volun­teer-led work already done by the Ratepayers Asso­ci­ation. We have mobil­ised volun­teers to man­age beach­front facil­it­ies dur­ing the fest­ive sea­son when BCM failed to show up. We fun­ded beach­front clean­ing, tank pump­ing and main­ten­ance using com­munity dona­tions and labour. We also fun­d, and do, ongoing pothole repairs and provide temporary traffic calm­ing devices using com­munity dona­tions. The community assist with grass cutting and bush clearing in public areas.

The only way to keep your part of South Africa beautiful and functioning is to get the community to fill the service gaps.

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Oh this is lovely to hear, I love those little communities southwest of East London eg Winterstrand/ Cove Rock/Kidds Beach - dreamt of staying there when i lived in the area.

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Here in Observatory there are quite a few homeless and often mentally unwell people - i have tremendous respect for a group of community activists who mobilise to host soup kitchens and address the stigma around this. As an overworked salaryman my personal contribution can only amount to treating them with dignity but there are wonderful initiatives in the area.

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