What Antjie Missed

Dear Brett,

I thought the Literary Festival was great. There was such a wide variety of topics and presentations, and a real buzz at and after each.

The one sadness for me was an outburst from the floor that expressed disgust at the speakers of the seminar, whites in general, and dismissed Franschhoek as full of rich people who are doing nothing. The anguish of the speaker was real and understood.

But she was looking far too narrowly at what is going on, and missed the widespread actions of countless ‘little efforts’ which are probably our major hope.

Franco is seen by many outside the town as the best effort they know to coordinate attempts to meet needs within the disadvantaged groups of our valley. There are dozens of other efforts going on in the town that seek no publicity and just get on with the job. Of course we have solved all the problems yet. There are too many. But we are working at it, and we are making a difference.

We are not alone in doing this; it is true all over the nation. Everywhere one goes, if one looks at the grassroots and not at the top, there are amazing things going on, and communities are changing.

It seems a peculiar blindness that fails to recognise the reality that most living things grow from the bottom up, and not from the top down.

We should look again and feel encouraged.

Helen Mekie