The New Beginnings community development project :social capacity as prerequisite for sustainability

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The South African wine industry has a history of super-exploitation. Wine farmlabour practices such as paternalism, tied housing, tied employment and the tot systemhave maintained farm worker communities in a trapped and dependent position.Within these trapped farm worker communities social pathologies such as alcoholabuse, a highly unstable family life, illegitimacy and illiteracy are common. On anindividual level, members of these communities are predominantly low in selfconfidence,self-esteem, self-reliance etc. On a communal level, domestic violence,child battering, drunken brawls, knife stabbings etc. are common in farm workercommunities.In response to these conditions in wine farm worker communities, a number ofinitiatives have been launched within the South African wine industry. This researchstudy focuses on one of these initiatives, called the New Beginnings project. As oneof the first projects of its kind, it succeeded in releasing a farm worker communityfrom its trapped and dependent position. This was the outcome since the projectsucceeded as a community development process.The community development process is essentially about building or increasing socialcapacity. The building of social capacity refers to a process whereby both agency andsolidarity are increased within a community. Agency or capacity building has to dowith the building of values, attitudes, knowledge, skills and personal qualities, e.g.self-esteem and self-reliance, of individual community members, while solidarity hasto do with the building of cohesion, trustful relationships and connectivity amongvarious community members. The New Beginnings project illustrates thatcommunity development practice that abide by guiding principles that aim to achieveboth agency and solidarity building within a community, would eventually result inthe sustainability of the project.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University