We visited Stevie and Deborah Seutloali’s house off Silverstream Road near Mamre which burned down on Saturday evening. They have been part of our interfaith community for some years, and have stepped out to create a life outside the city limits.
Thank you to all who have taken part by accompanying the visit, with material goods, or financial donations. Yesterday, James Ellman and Ferdy Truby of Elsies’ FHLC and Cecil Plaatjies and myself of CTII squeezed into the car full to the roof with food and many other useful things and headed north up the N7.
The Seutloali’s are facing rebuilding their house and material resource base. They lost their beloved cats in the fire. Stevie had not has his essential diabetes medication for 48 hours, and was feeling dizzy.
Despite this, we were surprized at a number of things when we visited.
Firstly, their optimism and resolve. Maybe this loss was for them not as major as it might have been for others. Maybe its down to their experience of suffering, perhaps is their undefeated faith, or just their personalities.
With the smell of charred wood still in the air, Stevie remained focussed on life. In the extensive planting surrounding the ruins, we counted at least 10 edible species of vegetable, all showing promise, even in midwinter. This is in no small part thanks to the agricultural skills of Owen and Henderson, who live as part of the homestead.
But what seems most sure in explaining their energy, is that they live in a concrete sense of community, of ubuntu.
They have been well cared for by their immediate community. The charred ruins of their household had been cleared and sorted, and their neighbors the Khanye’s: Mdu and Cwayita, and daughters Ntutu and Njabulo were housing them with great cheer. This is exemplary hospitality, and yet done quite naturally.
They welcomed us total strangers in and we sat in their well cared for home for a truly memorable tea. We noticed that in this environment, a state of the art solar electrical system.
As we were departing, we also met MaJane, the wife of Chief Zama and part of the commitee which oversees the neighbourhood. They provide counsel and structure to these diverse people in a harsh landscape, as part of a South Africa struggling to define itself, especially with relationship to Land.
All hail to the community at Gate 6, Silverstream Road! May you find success as you model a way of living where your sense of land, identity and empowerment might form.
We know that things happen in a flash, and we commiserate with your losses. Much of what we have seen over these years is just how hard your “far-flung” lives are.
But based on a small snapshot of grassroots citizens recovering from disaster together, you have got what it takes. You have it within you not just to grow food, care for animals, not just to provide electricity, and bore water.
In a world stumbling from crisis to self-inflicted crisis, you have within you a new way of being.
If you want to be part of the rebuilding of the Seutloali homestead, please contact us.
