30 years of democracy — UDF activist Réjane Woodroffe left high finance for critical social upliftment

“We are a lot more optimistic about South Africa [than people in big cities]. Here in rural areas, communities, because they have borne the brunt of struggles, are resilient. They have realised, you have to keep going. We have seen change happens when you just keep going.”

Some 15 years ago, Réjane Woodroffe permanently swapped the global investment sector, including US banker Merrill Lynch, for Nqileni in one of the remoter and poorest parts of the Eastern Cape’s former Transkei homeland. It was a decision that came after several years of splitting time between boardrooms and the Wild Coast following the 2004 establishment of the community-owned and run Bulungula Eco Lodge.

In 2007 she became a founding member and director of Bulungula Incubator, a not-for-profit organisation in support of community-owned and led projects. These include pre-schools, clinics, a radio station that reaches 78 nearby villages, Bulungula College high school (since 2016) and food security initiatives.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Rejane Woodroffe: Climbing a mountain starts with taking the first step

The trigger for this integrated rural development drive came in 2006 when a third of the babies in the Nqileni area died of diarrhoea because of a lack of access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation. Or as Woodroffe says, “I was getting to know the community... Everything fell into place”.

No grand plan existed as such, but the motivation was to do something about the challenges, be those of health, education or food security. It started with raising money for water tankers and a first preschool, for which the community raised the money and did the building work. One preschool led to many.

“Community members from other villages came to us and said, ‘We want preschools in our area’. The quote was, ‘You’ve turned the light on in my child’s mind’... While we helped raise the funds to build the infrastructure, which can take quite a long time, the communities themselves built the huts that were needed for a preschool with mud bricks and grass roofs,” she previously told the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

For Woodroffe, it is not about telling people what to do, but about people gaining ownership of their assets. Neither is it about just a youth project, or a health project or an education initiative, all must integrate. “There’s no silver bullet that moves you from poverty to sustainability... You do need to bring it all together. This is what the area needs.”

Using the analogy of a three-legged pot, she says community, government and civil society must work together because if any one of these legs wobbles the pot falls.

This perspective and approach arise from young formative years in struggles and affected communities. “That shaped who we are and gives us the tools to understand. There’s nothing done by one individual,” says Woodroffe, also talking of her life partner, David Martin, a fellow Cape Town activist whom she met in the UK while studying for development economics at Sussex University from 2004. He had just walked across Africa and was looking to fund Bulungula Eco Lodge.

‘Activists relaxed’

Woodroffe in the 1980s emerged as a student and United Democratic Front (UDF) activist on the Cape Flats after her family had been forcibly removed from District 6. Her activism grew out of that and led into the UDF’s public campaigns, including the anti-apartheid protest to Parliament in September 1989 that gave rise to the slogan “The purple shall govern” for the purple dye police had put into the water cannons used against demonstrators.

Voting in the 1994 first democratic elections was a milestone. But it turned out to be double-edged as Woodroffe focused on studying for a business degree at the University of Cape Town.

“Activists relaxed. We felt it was time to exhale and enjoy the golden era our father Nelson Mandela led us to,” says Woodroffe, adding this had been naive. “After 10 years it started to dawn on us, the work hasn’t even really begun.”

Some of that work is unfolding day by day at Bulungula Incubator where projects now range from before conception to career, from seed distribution to maths tutoring. To make an impact, projects need to be sustainable, and community ownership is crucial. It’s about models and then managing and monitoring. And things take time to develop.

Bulungula Incubator now employs 180 people, including 45 interns. Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) contracts like cleaning up after floods create job opportunities for between 300 to 550 people for some nine months of the year.

A good collaborative relationship exists with traditional leaders and government, which is funding a nurse’s salary and more. “If we do something, we have found government coming to the programmes.”

She acknowledges the current disillusionment and says, “We should have known better”. But progress has been made. Irrevocably so.

Progress and new transition

Today at Nqileni a gravel road goes to the village and piped water runs to communal taps while Internet connection came in 2019 and electricity cables in late 2023. The mud school refurbishment is ongoing, social grants are paid and the local hospitals, despite queues, provide excellent health care.

“All this has been done in 20 years... This is progress. Now we are going through a transition again. This is from the ANC having a concentrated majority to coalition governments... We hope this will be stable,” says Woodroffe. “We have lived under the ANC in a stable country. That can’t be underestimated.”

The narrative of South Africa being a failed state is nonsense, “South Africa is not a failed state”. Travels in Africa meant, for example, seeing young women in one country pregnant because of lack of access to contraception and education, and being stuck with no means to get out.

“In South Africa, yes, it is difficult, but not impossible to move up. We have moved the dial significantly. We need to continue to build.”

Backpacking for a year every five years has been a regular for Woodroffe and Martin. The last trip in 2021 was across Africa from Namibia, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then flying to West Africa to travel across Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Gambia. Guinea fell off — because of a coup they were not let in.

Travelling brings perspective. Woodroffe is where she is meant to be, “Life does not go in a straight line”. DM