Miracle in the Mountains

The spirit of Ubuntu (I am because you are) is acted out every day in this small corner of the Karoo.

Love Is a Warm Dover Stove

The early Karoo sun warms Tannie Pauline Grootboom as she sits on her favourite chair in a tiny kitchen. Her darling grandchild Goggie toddles at her feet.

 In the corner an old Dover stove putters steadily, exhaling a vague warmth. The ceiling is pitch-black from smoke. On an Eveready battery-powered radio The Eagles warble “Welcome to the Hotel California”.

Tannie Pauline, who lives with her family on a fruit farm just outside Uniondale, is 86 and diabetic. Some ill-advised apricot jam on her toast this morning has sent her blood sugar out of kilter.

Home-based carer Anneline Prens, backed up by Sister Sheila Earle, is frowning beside the stove as she works out the medication needed to get her back to normal. Colleague Loretta Blom is rubbing that much beloved ‘versterk room’ (strengthening cream) into Tannie Pauline’s back and aching joints.

Loretta and Anneline are part of a team seventeen home-based carers visiting sick members of the communities living in Uniondale, Avontuur and nearby Haarlem.

Funded by the Western Cape’s Department of Health, it’s a win-win situation. Most of the carers used to be jobless, or work seasonally picking fruit on the farms. Now they have a steady income, and have access to increasingly higher levels of health-training.

As members of the community themselves, they know who needs help. They regularly visit those who are too sick, poor or frail to go to the hospital for chronic medication.

And of course, it takes the pressure off the hospitals.

It’s one of UnIEP’s proudest undertakings.

The Angry Young Man

 The founders of UnIEP (the Uniondale Integrated Empowerment Project), Dave Hodgson and Reverend Steven Anthony, are an unlikely team.

 Dave once served the apartheid state, fighting wars on the border with the feared 32 Battalion. Later Dave was a senior military officer based in Knysna.

One of the trouble-stirring people on his files was a certain Reverend Steven Anthony of the Vereenigde Gereformeerde Kerk in the townships of Uniondale.

Steven, by his own admission, used to be a very angry young man. He’d became angry because of Apartheid’s injustices. The miserable poverty of Uniondale made him even angrier.

When Dave bought property in Uniondale, there was no love lost between the two.

“I had my own ideas about military men. In my day, the only white man you could trust was a dead one,” admits Steven.

Despite their backgrounds, they slowly developed a respect for one another, then a liking.

Uplifting Uniondale

 By 2003 they were good friends. And both were desperate to do something about the poverty and social problems that plagued Uniondale.

 Together they set up a non-profit Section 21 Company, and called it the Uniondale Integrated Empowerment Project (UnIEP).

 Their first mission was to purchase the derelict Uniondale Royal Hotel.

“It had become a hell-hole, full of drug dealers,” says Dave.

They then found 144 people desperate for jobs – 12 of them from a former criminal gang. With money from the State, they trained the men to restore the hotel, then the old Methodist church and a series of other houses.

Those that qualified were given the tools they needed for their new trade. Most are now making a good and honest living, adds Dave proudly.

Next it became clear there was an opening for people who knew how to make furniture. That’s how Nomdo Meubels was formed, a handful of carpenters making furniture for guesthouses and individuals out of blackwood and poplar.

Jobs out of thin air

A group of women formed the Rooi Rivier Rooi Miere, doing high quality quilting and embroidery. Some of their exquisite work lies draped across various five star beds at nearby Fancourt.

There are also two sewing projects, Knip ‘n Stuk, and Creative Fashions. They’re kept busy sewing school and work uniforms for Uniondale and Knysna.

Then there’s the Avontuur garden that grows organic vegetables and cultivates vegetable seedlings for small farms in the area.

Khoi-San Leather makes décor items and prestigious horse-blankets. The leatherworkers, all women, are delighted they can bring their children to work.

The hotel’s restaurant, the Lyon’s Lantern, is now a thriving little business, run by two women who had hardly dared dream they would ever have jobs. Let alone have their own profitable business….

Reasons to Hope

Steven and Dave both have independent incomes, yet spend considerable time and money getting state funding to maintain these projects and others. Why the trouble?

For Steven it is spiritual, and he loves the difference it makes in people’s lives.

“What gives me hope is that I can see the way people are holding their heads up now, not just in a material sense, but as human beings.”

And Dave?

“I just realised that if you want to be safe and happy yourself, then everyone around you must also be safe and happy.” - Words: Julienne du Toit   Images:  Chris Marais

• For more information, visit www.uniep.co.za or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .