Our politicians and government are failing us, but we can find hope in community

What is community? Not in the dictionary and literal sense of a group of people who live together and share the same norms, religion and customs based on geographical location. What I mean is where and how do we find a shared sense of kinship, belonging and inclusion in order for us to build a society and not break each other down. Is it possible to find community with people with whom you have little else in common other than your humanity and shared sense of hope and optimism for change in our society?

“All too often we think of community in terms of being with folks like ourselves: the same class, same race, same ethnicity, same social standing and the like. I think we need to be wary: we need to work against the danger of evoking something that we don’t challenge ourselves to actually practice,” says author and activist bell hooks.

She also emphasises that “when we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away”.

I recently visited Winterveld, about 90km from Johannesburg. A rural and poor community most notably characterised by difficult, degraded and sometimes non-existent roads that make getting to your destination a little hairy, a test of how serious you are about your business there, if you will.

There I met the women of the Mapula Embroidery Project, a dedicated and hopeful cohort who have woven the embroidery project quite literally into their lives as a sort of life jacket against the poverty, unemployment and disheartening conditions around them. They also use the work to tell the stories of their community, their latest award-­winning piece focusing on how environmental degradation affects poor communities.

Read in Daily Maverick: “Rural women of Winterveld sew to reap rewards of empowerment through embroidery project”

Living in South Africa, it’s quite easy to almost drown in the torrent of bad and sad news, leaving you in a constant fight between cynicism and optimism. When you find shoots of hope, such as the embroidery project, it galvanises you against the pessimism of our political failures.