Worldwide Movement News ::   White South African Fundraiser

The Aryan Baby Drive is sponsoring The White South Africa Fund Raiser to help these people out. Below is an article written by a woman in S. Africa who is trying to get these people some help, and this should explain their plight. This article is on the website and there will be photos of the people at this worker's camp posted on the website later on this week as well. We all are probably aware of the basic problems White South Africans face, but do we realize the horrible details? I didn't until Marge came to me, asking for assistance. Put yourself in their shoes...I would want someone to help me too. So, I have decided to start a Fund to raise $300 to send these people. They have no money or way of buying the regular necessities of life such as toiletries, food, clothes, blankets, etc. The ABD has already sent them 4 huge boxes packed with clothes of all sizes for the children and young adults. But these people need funds to purchase the basics for their families, and that is what the $300 will be for. I ask you all to donate whatever you can for these people, even if it's just $5. The goal is $300 and the sooner we reach it, the sooner we can send the funds to these people. The American dollar is worth about 5 or 6 times the value in S. Africa, so as you can see, the money we send them will be able to go a long ways. Please take the time to pass this email along to all your contacts and friends. Thank you!

To send a donation to The White South African Fund, you may send in well-concealed cash or a blank money order to:

Boxholder
c/o SA Fund
POB 3634
Costa Mesa, CA
92628   USA

-OR-

You may donate via PayPal at the website. Please make sure to write in the comments section that the donation is for the SA Fund. The website address is: http://www.skadi.net/babydrive

For those of you who are interested, once donations are sent in, there will be a running total of how much money is received for the fund and how much is still needed posted on the website.

The ABD thanks you all for your donations and time in reading this. The people of South Africa also thank you from the bottom of their hearts!

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WHEN THE JUG HAS RUN DRY
by Ina Strydom - for MWU Solidarity Magazine
Translated by Marge Leitner

The smell of coal and sun and soil hangs in the air. Tonight's meal is busy being cooked. It's two o'clock in the afternoon and the late winter sun is unexpectedly warm. There is no lawn. The ground has been swept clean.

The team of women who are doing the cooking are conversing quietly. Now and again someone laughs. Some of them are talking about another woman in the group. Another shouts angrily at them: they should get on with their work. They are eating soup tonight. Like most other nights. But it's food. Three times a day. For the people in the transit camp it's more than what they have had before they came here...

The transit camp is a place where the homeless are given shelter until they are back on their feet again. The idea is that this should happen in a couple of months. Reality is different: some of them have been here for years. And it's the lucky ones that manage to get to this transit camp. Some of them land in a place where they are just used and abused; others become squatters. And some of them stay on the streets - and float further and further away in a direction where life has become meaningless.

Poverty does not know color. It hits all people, no matter what color or creed, religion or culture. The people in the transit camp are all White. Most of them speak Afrikaans.

The spiral of poverty usually begins when they lose their jobs. Then they can't keep up with their payments on their homes, furniture and cars. Bit by bit these are taken away from them. What is left is usually sold in the pawn shop.

Until there is nothing left to sell. Until there is no place to stay.

If you are extremely lucky, someone will take you in and you can live somewhere in one of the outhouses or in the garage. This, for you and for your family. If there is still a family left in this kind of a despair.

Or you can knock on the door of the transit camp when you cannot go further. Here at least you will get a meal and a roof over your head. And perhaps more importantly, someone who will help you to regain direction in life, someone who will show you where the road is...because you are no longer able to see it...

The days in the transit camp follow each other in strict routine. At five thirty in the morning it's time to get up. Six o'clock is religious service and at six thirty breakfast. Seven o'clock the daily chores begin, cooking, cleaning, gardening.

Those who were able to get a job outside the camp, are taken to their place of work. The men who do not have work outside make things in the workshop which can be sold at a later stage. The women work on the clothes that have been donated by various charities.

In the afternoons, when the sun is setting and the winter chill cuts through the thin clothing, they sit outside for a while, talking quietly. About the day, about what has been. Maybe even about tomorrow.

And after supper - the soup which had been cooking from early in the day - everyone departs for their bed.

Families of four and five live in the family rooms; the singles share dormitories, where there are bunkbeds which are arranged in strict lines.

A few are speaking angrily about 'the world outside', because that world has spewed them out. There is no longer room for them there.

Circumstances have forced them out to where they are no longer needed; are no longer wanted. To a place where despair and and fear are their daily companions.

And where pride and dignity have become a luxury they no longer can afford. For others the outside world has become a strange place. A place where the rules have changed; a place which they no longer understand - and where they don't feel comfortable any more. And then there are those who fear the outside world. For them the transit camp with its strict routine and iron discipline has become a safety net which protects them from the temptations which caused them to come to the camp in the first place.

These people have come to the end of their hopes. For them there is nothing left. Nothing to fight for. Nothing to believe in. Nothing to hope for. They just breathe; that which is still alive in their all too thin bodies. Just the very least will to live; the almost desperate will to cling to that which is left of life.

And very few people in the 'outside world' actually care.

Because they don't know.