Chapter 6

‘We, the People’

The opening lines of South Africa’s constitution — ‘We, the people’ — are the marrow in the bones of a sturdy democracy. The people will govern society collectively, and appoint a government of elected people to do so on their behalf.

But the democratic process isn’t just about showing up at the poling stations every five years. It calls for active, daily participation by the people, for the people. Here’s how citizens are doing it.

15 July 2025

**Piles of sh*t (Part 2) — Corporates are at odds with our constitutional right to a healthy, safe environment**

The story of a cattle herding community tackling single-use nappy pollution in the Eastern Cape’s communal grasslands shows up the foundational flaw in the global use-and-discard economy. Consumers are expected to mop up the pollution coming out of its tailpipe, when powerful profit-taking corporations should be turning off the pollution at source.

First published in the Daily Maverick.

13 July 2025

Piles of sh*t (Part 1) — Communal farmers tackle nappy waste, and the climate crisis

Lives depend on keeping Africa’s old-growth grasslands healthy. But a grim form of pollution in the Eastern Cape — soiled nappies — is undermining communal farmers’ ability to be good stewards of shared grazing. A simple solution shows how local action, if done at scale, will have regional and global implications as the climate becomes more volatile.

First published in the Daily Maverick.

Herdsman with cattle in a grassy field, mountainous landscape in the background.

21 April 2025

New African zeitgeist — citizens want climate action, digital age might be how they get it

Citizens across Africa want climate action. New research shows that internet connectivity, which plugs people into novel media forms, can bridge the climate literacy gap and mobilise citizens to demand more from their governments in North-South negotiations. It can also boost ground-up participation in developmental decision-making as the continent’s climate becomes increasingly unstable.

First published in the Daily Maverick.

A spiritual connection with “the land” drives the amaMpondo’s resistance to extractive mining.

AA spiritual connection with “the land” drives the amaMpondo’s resistance to extractive mining.

More wordsmithery…

‘A spiritual connection with “the land” fuels the amaMpondo’s resistance to extractive mining on South Africa’s Wild Coast, and it is this same force that fuelled a peasant revolt against the apartheid government in 1960. Environmental defenders are willing to die for their land. Some already have.

The day the prospectors came, so did the storm. It was in 2007, and clouds barrelled towards the coast, driven by a wind that churned up dust and foretold of the downpour to come. Beyond the rusty dunes to the east, the Indian Ocean surged with equal force.

“It was scary,” says Mamjozi Danca, a traditional healer and grandmother who has lived here all her life.

Her family couldn’t bring the cattle in from grazing, and “even cooking wasn’t easy”. They hunkered down in their rondavel, a traditional round homestead with a thatched roof not far the now iconic mineral-dense dunes of Xolobeni on South Africa’s aptly named Wild Coast, to wait it out.

Xolobeni is a village on a 24 kilometre (15 mile) stretch of wilderness about four hours’ drive south of the port city of Durban. It has become synonymous with a two-decades long fight by the Indigenous amaMpondo against extractive mining interests that had their sites on the powdered titanium in the dunes here. There have also been more recent attempts to do seismic surveys to find offshore oil and gas deposits.’

Read the full story here.

Close-up of a person holding a small branch with green leaves and tiny purple flowers, wearing a beige jacket with frayed cuffs.

“Xolobeni... has become synonymous with a two-decades long fight by the amaMpondo against extractive mining interests that had their sites on the powdered titanium in the dunes.”

— Leonie Joubert