R: It's a very fancy term, Social Capital. I think that people express it in a variety of different ways, each one which has a part of the truth. It's the constant yearning in people for unity, om saam te staan. Others express it in terms of ubuntu, the interdependence of people. For me, at its simplest it is a simple glue that society needs, that communities require, that families require, that holds us together against great odds: poverty, unemployment, illness, disease, violence, crime and all of those kinds of things.
It's when governments and the police and the health system is not enough to make us survive; it is then when the resources of a community have to step in; when people have to stand together, when people have to partner with government, where people have a part of the solution and government has another part of the solution. And it is really when we glue it all together, when the puzzle comes together that we begin to express Social Capital. And the project that we are busy with in honoring people, volunteers, people who step forward and say, "I am willing to apply the glue that will hold us together; that will unite people within communities who look the same, who talk the same, who are the same, who share an identity." But also volunteers who go and to say, "I will even unite you with people who are different to you, that you don't understand always because of language, religion, race and class and all of those kind of things.
I will even go and fetch resources from outside the community to, to bring in," like fundraising efforts, and soup kitchen, and the butcher on the corner to give the bones for the soup, etc. etc. And so I think that Social Capital at its simplest is the way in which communities are woven together, are pulled together, are glued together. It is the difference between a community despairing and a community surviving; it is giving hope to the community and it is mobilizing a community. And the people that we come to honour, that government wants to honour, that as premier of this province I want to honour, is really the kind of people who stand between the survival of a community and the despair of a community; the illness of a community and the will to fight back and to bring health to a community. It's a community succumbing to crime or a community standing up and saying, "Because we are together we are strong, and because we have resources we mobilize those resources." We are held together and we are glued together, and that's I think what we come to honour.
K: How will provincial government and the department build on the work of the volunteers?
R: Over the last 2, 3 years when government has been humble enough to see that it doesn't have all the answers, and when government has been itself inspired by the examples of the kind of people, who "Face the People" wants to honour. Government has had to admit that we have shortcomings and unless we form partnerships with those kinds of people, wherever they are, we are not going to succeed in fighting poverty, unemployment, crime and ill-health. And therefore, government has begun to move, to assist such people to do even more for the community than what they are currently doing. And so, for example, community development workers are modeled on such examples in society so that they can emulate those people, the twenty people, the hundreds and thousands of people, who help communities, so that community development workers can see how they can assist and how they can draw in the talents of those kind of volunteers.
We begin also now to create ways in which the expanded public works programme can begin to employ such people and give them a stipend so that those people become part of the normal course of what government does. Those people will run hospitals and clinics, will give out recipes of easy medicines that will keep a community healthy, will go and do home-based care, for people irrespective of whether they get a stipend or not, but government must be humble enough to say, "Here is an amount of money that, when you come home tonight, your family will not say, you've neglected us because you've been busy with others." It will be able to say, "Here is some bit of food that I am able to put on the table because of things that I do for love anyway." And I think that that's the simple recognition that people require in addition to the recognition in terms of status.
K: Can you relate this to Social Capital, and explain how volunteers can break down racial and class divisions.
R: If Social Capital is about gluing people together, in order for them to survive better, the circumstances of life, then the divisions between African, Coloureds and Whites in the Western Cape is against Social Capital, then the divide between rich and poor stands against Social Capital, that religious differences stand between Social Capital. And so, the Home for All is an attempt to bring people together despite their differences. It's to say to people, at the end of the day, in a beautiful province like the Western Cape, we will all sink because we are not realising that the well-being of the rich is dependent on caring for the poor; that Africans and coloureds have the same challenges of housing, of disease, of poverty that they face; and unless white people also contribute to the well-being and the unity of coloureds and Africans, we are all going to be sitting on a time bomb in the Western Cape. And so the Home for All is absolutely critical.
And it is out of that understanding that the Home For All wants to use the talents of volunteers such as the twenty that we honour here today. Erm that we want to use the talents of those people, not only to do the things that they do normally, like bring good health to people, teach people how to fight disease, how to fight crime, how to fight domestic violence and all of those things, we understand that every time they do that, they also unite our people across the many divides because it is those divides that stop people from realizing their full potential. It is those divides that let people fall into despair and hopelessness. And I think that in addition to mobilising the human resources that people have, as well as the community resources that we all have, it is, at the end of the day, standing together, being united and crossing and linking, erm, up with people, finding bridges between people that at the end of the day, will ensure that our community is not only a vibrant one, but it's a healthy one, it's a peaceful one, and it is one in which all our children can realise their potential.
K: Why until 2010?
R: 2010 is nice because it gives us a concrete time frame and a vision that is realizable within that. It's also an iconic year in the sense that the whole world will come to play soccer. It places firmly an emphasis on young people, and unless we make Social Capital succeed amongst young people, and unless we teach them active ways to combat disease before you get it, and unless we get them engaged in positive erm, activities such as playing soccer, or getting involved in youth groups and debating erm, issues, and getting skills and all of those kind of things, I think we may end up perpetuating all the things which have brought us the problems of poverty, of crime, of unemployment and all of those things in the first place. So, the provincial government wants particularly to assist in those kind of programmes that build Social Capital particularly amongst young people and amongst the youth.
And I think that our vision therefore for Social Capital, is a young person, who can see beyond today; because Social Capital breaks down when young people don't see a tomorrow, when they don't see a future and when they think that everything is fatalistic: that there's nothing hopeful in that future and they act only for today, they act only for what gratifies them now and make short term decisions, rather than decisions which have a long term benefit. And I think that we are particularly looking for those interventions, for those actions which can give young people a vision, and therefore 2010 stands out as a vision for soccer, a vision for a better Western Cape, a vision for skills that will be relevant then and a vision for a future that can be free of poverty.
No, I am extremely proud to be associated with a DVD that honours twenty of the foremost people, who volunteer, who make sacrifices, and who bring services to communities, which otherwise, would be in despair. I want to say that those people, all twenty of them - and many, many others - stand between the despair and hope in communities, between people would be ill or people who can fight for better health, and people who mobilize not only community resources, but the inner resources of everyone, who at particular moments have every reason to feel downhearted.
And so I think that the greatest gift that they bring to communities is hope, but they also bring services, soup, good health, ss? erm, and resources of government that otherwise communities may not have experienced. And so, I want to say that the provincial government and I, as Premier, am exceptionally proud to, in a very small way, erm, honour all twenty of the people. Their portraits, I think, say who they are in ways far better than anyone else can, and very clearly, I want to say that hopefully this DVD will be a living testament to the sacrifices that they have made in service of communities.
