A Conversation with Refilwe Rammitlwa
We spoke with Refilwe Rammitlwa, who is the Community Development Manager at the Royal Bafokeng Administration (RBA) in the Royal Bafokeng Nation.
Tell us about yourself and the Royal Bafokeng Nation - what role does it play?
I am a community development practitioner, working within the health and social development services in the Royal Bafokeng Administration. Guided by vision 2035, to be a relevant and innovative traditional African community in a changing world.
The Royal Bafokeng Nation is a traditionally governed community of 150,000 people living in 29 villages in the North West Province of South Africa. RBA has retained its unique cultural identity and has developed administrative and corporate institutions to enable the social development of its citizens. The RBA oversees and offers community-based projects and programmes, providing infrastructure and social services to the community.
The Royal Bafokeng Nation is a traditional authority that complements the role that the national government plays. We ensure that our communities receive good quality service and we make sure that our communities are well informed of government services and other activities. We work closely with the government and have a good relationship and partnerships with other traditional communities across South Africa.
Refilwe Rammitlwa
Tell us about your community development work?
We are currently running projects mainly related to food security and community development – linking communities with opportunities, skills development, so that they can start livelihood projects.
We also support the work of 86 NGOs operating in the Royal Bafokeng Nation. Our role is to play a more bird’s eye view – our researchers identify key issues of the region which includes teenage pregnancy, gender-based violence, substance abuse, and elderly abuse. We give information, insight and training to the NGOs and try to diversify them in order to meet the needs of the communities. With NGOs, we can reach the grassroots level and have a great impact on the communities, however, we cannot work in silos. We work to connect them to opportunities and also expose them to the world.
What are you seeing on the ground?
As a country, we are facing very difficult issues of poverty and unemployment. We want to tackle these issues, particularly working with youth and young adults. It’s important to bring opportunities and open up income generating activities.
The economic downturn and inflation is affecting the communities. In particular, we are in the mining area and there are many mines that are shutting down (because the lifespan of the mines have finished or there are problems relating to the site of the mining). This is exacerbating unemployment and many in our communities are going to sleep without any food. We are very worried about the vulnerable communities.
Where do you see hope? What are you currently working on that’s giving you energy?
In my department, we are busy with a new project creating a community nutrition and development centre. It’s a one-stop centre where people can come and cook, have meals but it doesn’t stop there. We involve different departments so that they can provide opportunities, information and interventions that the community needs. Currently we have 1 but we want to expand to 4 centres.
We are also working to encourage our communities to make use of their backyard garden in order to tackle hunger. We created a partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Department of Royal Bafokeng Economic Development), in order to train people on growing their own food for household consumption in the backyard garden if they have capacity. It’s an education programme for local sustainable farming targeting the individual households.
What kind of work are you doing with young people?
It’s a challenge. Young people want quick cash and are not patient. So we are trying to engage them in a different way. We want to bring something that can attract them to be part of – bringing culture, ethics, norms of the Bafokeng Nation. I want the young people to be interested in our indigenous ways.
For example, we have makgotla, our traditional ways of doing participatory meetings where the leaders share the problem, the communities come up with solutions together and initiate projects. We still have meetings like this with our king to discuss issues. We want to bridge the traditional with the future generations. This kind of knowledge/ways of organising can be used not only for Bafokeng youth but also other young people around the world.
What do you hope to get out of the Indaba?
I want to learn from what others are doing – maybe there are new approaches we can learn from, to improve what we are doing. We want to build partnerships and create opportunities for our communities. What we are doing is embedded in the hyperlocal but we realise how important it is to see ourselves as globally relevant and bridging time/generations.
Comments