The Pompeni River Bridge project team are a group of volunteers, who worked on the damaged old Blundell Road Bridge to Shallcross in 2022. The writer says the future of South Africa will not be decided only by those elected to public office. It will also be shaped by volunteers who organise food drives, teachers who refuse to give up on struggling pupils, nurses who comfort strangers, business owners who create opportunities, lawyers who make justice more accessible and neighbours who look after one another.
EVERY five years, South Africans hold an election. But every day, our communities hold another one. The first takes place in voting stations. The second takes place in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. One is decided by ballot papers. The other is decided by memory.
That second election has no campaign period. There are no posters, no loudspeakers and no political rallies. It begins the moment an election ends and continues until the next one arrives. Every day, communities ask themselves the same question: who keeps showing up?
Not who speaks the loudest, not who trends on social media, not who makes the biggest promises. Who shows up! Who answers the phone when there is a burst pipe, who attends the funeral of a neighbour without announcing it, who sits with a family after a fire has destroyed everything they own, who helps a pensioner complete a government application, who coaches children after work because there is nowhere else for them to go, who stays behind after everyone else has left.
