June 2020 Episode of Solidarity Is This

Deepa Iyer:

Hi, everyone. This is Deepa Iyer with a message before you listen to this month's episode of Solidarity Is This. This conversation that you're about to listen to was taped before the murders of black people in the United States by police and the uprisings that followed. That's why you're not going to hear us talking about those important issues in this particular episode. You'll be hearing a conversation between me and Phumeza Mlungwana and Nicola Browne about global solidarity in the wake of COVID 19. But please subscribe to Solidarity Is This for future episodes and podcasts, where we'll be discussing the structural and systemic racism in the United States and other issues that are so important to communities of color and allies in the United States and beyond. Thank you. I hope that you'll learn a lot from this particular episode, just as I did.

Deepa Iyer:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Solidarity Is This Podcast, I'm your host Deepa Iyer. How are you all doing out there? I know that it's not easy for any of us. So many of us are struggling at an individual level with the effects of this pandemic and sheltering in place, as well as dealing with personal loss and grief, by curious trauma, the impact of isolation and even feeling the burden of increased responsibilities, whether it's at work or with caregiving. And then of course, there's this broad pervasive fear and uncertainty that I think all of us are gripped with from time to time. And for others, there has also been a sense of deeper awareness of what is happening in this moment, whether that's an awareness of one's own privilege and benefits, whether there that is an awakening to structural and systemic oppression, or whether there is an awakening in terms of one's purpose, a sense of clarity and connection with one's values and purpose in life.

Deepa Iyer:

And on top of this, those of us who are part of social change movements, whether that is related to mutual aid associations in your neighborhood or whether that's large scale digital organizing, we too are feeling the weight of this moment. What are the possibilities for growth and connectivity, even as we feel restricted, constricted and even uncertain and hopeless at times? Well for me, one of those areas for possibility and growth has become the ability to connect with activists across countries. That's why in this episode of Solidarity Is This is focused on global solidarity. I'm really honored to have two remarkable women and human rights activists joining me today, Nicola Browne from Northern Ireland and for Phumeza Mlungwana from Cape Town, South Africa. What connects the three of us is that we're all fellows with the Social Change Initiative, which is based in Belfast. That's an organization which bridges the world of activism and philanthropy across nations and communities. I met Nicola in Northern Ireland last summer at one of our fellowship gatherings. We immediately bonded. And that experience really transformed my perspective and my view of solidarity. Phumeza and I haven't met in person yet, but her book called Fragments of Activism received great reviews that are gathering last year. That's why I'm so excited to welcome both Nicola and Phumeza to Solidarity Is This.

Nicola Browne:

Thanks Deepa.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

Thank you for having us.

Deepa Iyer:

Let me tell you a little bit more about Nicola and Phumeza. Nicola Browne is a human rights activist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a 2018 and 2019 Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. She is the project coordinator for Act Now, which is a new people powered campaigning community for Northern Ireland. For 12 years, Nicola worked for Participation and Practice of Rights or PPR and she was the Director of Policy between 2011 and 2018. She's currently a fellow with the Social Change Initiative Leadership for Social Justice and peace in Northern Ireland Program. Phumeza Mlungwana is a senior program officer with international budget partnership in South Africa, where she supports strategies for building budget collective urgency to secure improved basic services for communities. She was formerly the general secretary of the Social Justice Coalition, a social movement based in Cape Town.

Deepa Iyer:

Phumeza is currently completing her MPhil in Criminology, Law and Society. And she too is a Social Change Initiative fellow and co-authored a book called Fragments of Activism. Phumeza and Nicola, welcome to Solidarity Is This. I'm really excited to be in conversation with you, though I do wish that it was around a different set of topics, but I think it's so important to have this conversation and to have the listeners of this podcast understand what's happening in terms of global movements, in other parts of the world, not just the United States, which tends to be often centered in a lot of conversations. I want to start actually by asking both of you a question about your point of entry into social justice work. You're both human rights activists. You've been doing this work for quite some time. So Phumeza, I'll start with you. Can you share a little bit about your point of entry, why did you start doing social change work and how has your journey changed to where you are right now?

Phumeza Mlungwana:

On a personal level for me, I was born and raised in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. And Khayelitsha is one of the biggest townships. You probably know about the inequality, the challenges with crime violence, poor levels of service delivery, whatever you would picture in a township. So that is my childhood. That is who I am. But obviously, when you grow up as a child, this is your life. That's what you know. You don't problematize it in the at sense. And so I guess from a young age, I sort of like... And I think my parents sort of helped to want to better our situations, to want to make sure that... Actually I want to study, I want to make sure in as much as I come from a public school that has limited resources, I want to make sure that I become something in life. I want to make sure that a lot of the people when you grow up, some of your friends become drug addicts, some people are killed along the way. There's a lot of... I've lost some of my friends through violence. I recently lost my brother through gun violence.

Deepa Iyer:

I'm so sorry to hear that.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

So both my parents are working class and so coming from that background... But I think only later in life, I started making linkages to how I grew up to the biggest systematic issues. I went to school and I thought I was going to... I wanted to be a couple of different things and I didn't study any of those things. I wanted at some point to be a radio broadcaster. I wanted to be an occupational therapist. I wanted to be an accountant, but I think when I got to university, what drew me social sciences, because I felt like it allowed me a very direct link with my community. And I think that's when I met my fate with the Social Justice Coalition, which is one of the organizations that I've been part of for... Which sort of defined my activism career.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

So a lot of the other things that I've been part of at community level have been initially of youth development here and there. But we don't say these are social justice work. But I think in the formal sense, the Social Justice Coalition was where my political home was built, my political consciousness was sort of was made a way. And this was about probably 10 or 15 years ago when I joined the branch. And the only thing we were trying to do was to make sure that informal settlement had something, a toilet, they had water, that people who had cases of rape or murder, their cases, the justice system sort of was taking, playing its role. So I would say that was my entry point, but obviously the more you become aware, the more you start tracking yourself back and saying, "Actually that was probably my moment of consciousness, but I've probably been part of social justice work for a long time before that." So long answer but...

Deepa Iyer:

No thank you for sharing Phumeza and it's clear to see the trajectory between how you grew up and then understanding the systemic roots of injustice and inequity as well. And I just wanted to say my heart goes out to you and your family about the loss of your brother. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about the Social Justice Coalition and also the work you're doing now as we get into the conversation. But thank you for sharing. Nicola, same question to you with a little bit of a twist. What was your point of entry into social justice work and what keeps you going?

Nicola Browne:

Just listening to Phumeza, a lot of that resonates particularly the kind of sense of looking back to discover the answer to that question. I think it's really hard to kind of know what your entry point is without looking back. And I think there's maybe a few points. I mean, looking back now, my mom worked in a factory when she was in her 20s and she was a shop steward, she represented the union. And I think I've taken a lot of my politics and my emphasis on workers and particularly working class people from her and that experience. I mean I, grew up in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast. And I grew up during the conflict, a 30 year conflict that happened in the Northern Ireland, but it was very localized and it was really clear now looking back the fact that my dad got a job in the fire brigade, which is a good job, and were able to move slightly further out of areas like North Belfast, which is where they were from, which really suffered the brunt of the conflict.

Nicola Browne:

So looking back now, I can kind of see the little benefits, the little privileges in their life that made an impact on mine. But again, the conflict was very much something that was there. Now I can understand the impact of that in terms of segregation, our schools are segregated. So two main communities, Catholic and Protestant aren't educated together. And it'd be very rare that you would have a friend from the other community growing up. And that was the case for me. And then the other point, I think what brought me to social justice work was in university where I did have a broader circle of friends from different communities and I studied law, but our course was structured in such a way in that we did all our main subjects in the first two years and in the last two years, we kind of did critical analysis and that's when I studied gender and feminism and law. And that just blew my mind in so many ways.

Nicola Browne:

I feel like we spent that year, then deconstructing everything we'd learned about how the state works and how things should be. So that was really important. But then also when I started to work in Belfast in my early 30s with PPR, Participation and Practice of Rights, and that work was with communities in North Belfast who were directly affected by poor housing, housing shortages, single mothers living with damp on the wall and water running down the wall, mental health problems, lots of things that were problems during the conflict and after still 20 years on still problems. I think I got exposure to how communities were treated, not only through those conditions, but also when they started to claim their rights and challenge those conditions. The way in which they were treated by government, by people who owed them a much better service than they were getting, was a real eye opener for me. The disrespect that they were treated with, which just matched the living conditions that they were forced to live in. And I think that really was my moment of really understanding how the world can be for people.

Deepa Iyer:

Yeah. And Nicola, I know you've done so much work both with PPR, but also with your work right now, which we'll talk about some more, on how to shift both the narrative but also address the systemic issues as well. So looking forward to learning more about that. Which leads me to sort of my next question, we're trying to explore global solidarity in the time of this pandemic, right? But clearly, although for some people, the pandemic has become a wake up call that there are actually these disparities that exist along class and race lines in particular, all around the world. People like you obviously have been ringing the alarm for quite some time.

Deepa Iyer:

Nicola, you talked about the troubles and the conflict and how the systemic underlying inequities have been in place for 30 plus years. And Phumeza, you talked about the racial inequity and the class inequity in places like Cape Town in South Africa. So the underlying causes were always there. So can you both share a little bit about the ways in which the current reality is exacerbating, what was already brewing under the surface or manifesting under the surface and particularly, who's being most affected and how? So I'm going to ask you to start as often Nicola and then I'll go to Phumeza.

Nicola Browne:

Even pre-pandemic for Northern Ireland, I mean, it's important to understand, I suppose that in common with most peace processes, our peace process, Good Friday Agreement, The Belfast Agreement is built upon a model of economic growth so that peace will be underpinned by investment. And this investment will then lift up all our communities and the rising tide will lift all boats. And that has failed. Our most marginalized communities who have only seen people who are better off in the middle class, get further and further away as their salaries rise and they're able to access jobs. That kind of investment has not impacted the most deprived areas in Northern Ireland. And if you take a map, Northern Ireland and you put the areas on there that were most affected by the conflict in terms of deaths, and then overlay that with the map of the most deprived areas, it would be the same areas.

Nicola Browne:

So that kind of systemic inequality and deprivation was entrenched hugely even before this. And I think that will only be impacted further. I mean, I think we've already seen studies that job losses are already impacting people who are on the edge economically. On the other hand, a lot of those communities, people who are cleaners, people who work in retail, predominantly women will be on the front line as it's described, going to work throughout this pandemic and then putting their own health at risk, putting their families at risk because there's very little choice. And I think although I'm really encouraged in some ways by the kind of outpouring of gratitude towards key workers who were about four weeks ago described as low skilled workers, why we're describing them is essential and key because we're seeing who it is actually keeps things going. And there's a lot of love and gratitude coming towards them.

Nicola Browne:

But I also feel like if we're not careful, that could silence them about speaking about the realities of their situation. So that's a concern I have. I mean, in the middle of this mental health issues in Northern Ireland have always been much higher than in the rest of the UK, for example. Which is certainly partly at least studio legacy of the conflict. Issues like reproductive rights have always being pushed to the side. Women's issues in general have been pushed to the side because we still have quite a conservative society here. And those issues just haven't seemed to be something that are relevant or they've actually been a point of agreement for most of the political parties in that we shouldn't have reproductive rights for women and the women's issues shouldn't be progressed. So it's kind of a double warning on some of those issues.

Nicola Browne:

So those are the things that were troubling us before. And for some of them, there have been chunks of light and there's been space to progress. Something like reproductive rights and the right to abortion care in Northern Ireland has taken some steps forward during the pandemic, which has been really encouraging. But on the whole, I think like without kind of concerted action, mobilization and a real injection of hope and creativity, my fear would be that the communities that have been most impacted will continue to be most impacted. And another fear I have actually is I think fatigue, around social justice issues and around communities, people are tired and people increasingly want to go back to something that they feel is normal. So I think there's a job of work to be done within activism that really is about injecting hope and joy into the work, because I feel like that really helps us to move forward and gives us motivation to imagine what our world can be like coming out of this and then to take the struggle, to take all the struggle that the guests is there.

Deepa Iyer:

I think that fatigue is so real and I can resonate with that with conversations here in the United States with folks who are in these movements, who are already pretty fatigued because of the administration that we have here and then are facing the work related to the pandemic. Phumeza, what about you, tell us a little bit about the pre-pandemic realities in back in South Africa and how the pandemic has now exacerbated those conditions.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

So firstly, I think like any other city, Cape Town has very stark inequalities. And so if you look at Cape Town, you see where the black people are and you see where the white people are. And that brings for us for few years, we've been saying, "Yes there are a lot of historical reasons why our cities look the way they are, but there's reason why they should look like that in 2020." And this is the one thing that people have been missing, that in as much as we have issues that are by a cause of historical conditions that our cities went through, there isn't a really targeted push to change how the trends of inequality has structured, how our cities structured, how access... I was listening at Nicola speaking, access to jobs is structured, access to housing that is actually closer to working opportunities.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

Just a few example in Cape Town. I think one of the things that we've realized, and we've been saying throughout before is that there's this disconnect between our politics governance, like public governance, is that the people who are in office, seemingly they are running office and they should be providing leadership, but their leadership is very disconnected to the realities of the people on the ground. And you can see that still exists within the pandemic in terms of how some of the regulations and some of the initiatives that are supposed to combat COVID, the way they're implemented is that there's a huge disconnect to the people that are lead and the people that are leading. And I think because we are all in social justice, we've been saying these things and I don't think it's the fault of residents, citizens, it's because citizens have been saying all these things, it's just that the people who have the power to do something about it aren't listening. And so that's the first thing.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And I think one stuck example that has been stuck with me for... and it was actually making me angry. And I think its leads to what Nicola was talking about. About feeling a little bit of fatigue and despondency but I felt like it was making me angry for a few years. Because I remember when we started, we were raising a question of basic service to say, look, if communities are sharing a toilet, a communal toilet, it's different from when you have a toilet in your own home, which you clean yourself, which you can wake up at the middle of the night and go to the toilet. You can wake up at the middle of night, go grab a glass of water from a tap. These communities can't do that. They need to walk a distant to access a functioning toilet. They might get there, that toilet might be locked or that toilet might be broken or that toilet might just be dysfunctional because there's no maintenance and cleaning.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

But there was a different layer to that. In as much as this is just about accessing a toilet, people were robbed on the way to try and access the toilet. People were raped. Women were raped on their way to try and access the toilet. Some people have been stabbed and some people have been murdered, have lost their lives on trying to abuse an open field or use a communal toilet. And so for us, it was saying, an issue of basic services connects directly to an issue of violence and crime. And also the violence, which is psychological, which is physical, which is psychosocial, which is sexual violence.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And then what this virus is also showing is the level of how our governments act very good at establishing regulations and laws and policies that are not adapted to context. It's well that we are fighting coronavirus at this point but the way we're going to fight it in a suburban, urban city is completely different to how we're going to do it to a rural area or to a township. And again, that's not coming out and some people are surprised. I'm like, "That is what people have been saying all these years." That broad policies are not a blanket approach. Policies need to be adapted to context. Yes, we need to learn from the US, we need to learn from Ireland, we need to learn from China, we need to learn from other provinces within South Africa, but they need to be adapted to context.

Deepa Iyer:

What you said really resonated Phumeza, like the failure and leadership, the lack of people centered infrastructure for the sake of it is not enough. And I think that's so clear in the example that you gave as well. And both of you also, when you think about the lack of leadership in government, that often then shifts the onus to social change organizations and civil society to fill the gaps. So I wanted to ask both of you, you're both part of deep networks of activists and organizations in your countries. How are folks responding right now?

Phumeza Mlungwana:

Firstly, there's a lot of good initiatives that a lot of activists have started with are responding to the social security crisis that we face in South Africa. A lot of people with that who are losing their jobs as a result of the crisis, a lot of families that are left without food, a lot of community education to how do we make sure that we limit our chance of contracting the virus? I think in our last connection with the other fellows, we spoke a little bit about Cape Town together, which is a brilliant initiative that a lot of... which is putting together activists, community leaders, religious leaders and residents to try and find ways of co-organizing and really be at the face of community challenges. And the second one is I'm part of International Budget Partnership, South Africa. So over the years, we're working on basic services and building partnerships around budget collective agency and especially informal supplements.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And one of the initiative that a few different organizations have established is to say, we have a crisis of COVID but we have lockdown, which means people shouldn't move outside of their homes. But these communities have a highly dense, there's shared infrastructure, which people whether they want to protect themselves or not, they have limited ability to do. And so that campaign is trying to get sort of like timely feedback from residents to do they have water? Because we know we need to wash our hands to ensure that we combat the spread. Do they have a toilet? Is that toilet functioning? Is that toilet cleaned? Because if a toilet is shared by hundreds of people, you don't know if one of those people has already contracted the service. And so we're pushing for a lot of maintenance and cleaning and delivery of services.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And these are all existing problems. But we saying, you must remember that when you making initiatives, some of your communities don't have these services. We're trying to push a drive for communities to receive hand sanitizers and soap to ensure that they're able to at least try and protect themselves. But in all of this, we're trying to push for government to actually have a conversations with residents. It's not enough to say I'm delivering water, I'm delivering services, how does that look like on the ground? There were communities that had no water completely when we started this campaign and they had to walk across a community, across their neighborhood. But because we have lockdown, the soldiers and there's police, and police and soldiers block them because they think they are just violating the lockdown rules.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And I think through that, that campaign has been pushing to say, "Give these people services in their communities. This is not luxury. This is things that they need." So that's another drive that we were really pushing to. And it's really focusing at local government level. It's really focusing on building an interaction with residents and communities and that's also going on. But there's so many other initiatives that people have been taking part of to say, how do we protect women that are at home now with their partners who might be abusive, but now they actually whip them and lock down in their homes? How do we make sure that they're able to walk from home and go to a police station? But also how do we make sure that we bring help? That they can call a number or... from their own home without being heard? Or they can send a message because I can't call for help for Nicola to come help me if my perpetrator is in the house, because I'm going to be heard, which puts me a lot more in danger.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

So a lot of activists have been pushing for gender based violence to really be taken care of very seriously. So there's a lot of initiatives that are... I think it's showing how amazing just citizens are always willing to come together and find concrete solutions. And a lot of people, critically the government, but they're still very collaborative, which I think is, for me is just a, it's one thing that this crisis has done. Is that everyone is very critical, but everyone is not just being critical. They've been critical in saying, "This is how we would think you should address some of these challenges to make sure that we're all safe."

Deepa Iyer:

Yeah. Thank you. And when you were speaking, I was also thinking back to what you had said earlier that some of these safety orders that are blanket around the world need to be contextual. Like you said again, because they need to respond to the context of particular communities who can't actually be in lockdown. If they have to cross the neighborhood to access water, which then keeps them safe. And it's great to hear about some of the organizing that's happening. And Nicola, I know you're also really engaged in different organizing campaigns. Tell us a little bit about some of the key demands that organizers have both around narrative shift, but also around basic social services as well.

Nicola Browne:

Around basic services, I think that was the first kind of series of demands that really became very visible. And it really struck me listen to Phumeza, I just listened to your conversation there. I mean, sometimes there's an idea that communities are all pathetic and they don't care and they're really hard to mobilize and you know, how would we get them in the falls in human rights worker? And I think what happened as COVID hit, it really gave the light to that kind of idea that communities don't care or communities can't organize or can't do amazing things. Because I think I saw certainly in Northern Ireland, I mean any group that has linked with communities from community groups, youth groups, groups that were embedded in their communities, were so active and they were everywhere and they were mobilizing, doing amazing things, getting surveys of their community to establish needs and then meeting those needs.

Nicola Browne:

And so many things were just happening organically or seemingly organically, which it always seems like organic when you're watching from the outside of some of it and it's really been inspirational. But then also, it was also quite visible who wasn't there in the early days. I find that [inaudible]. And so some of the bigger organizations or bigger human rights organizations for a while seemed to be a bit unsure and influx. And I think that speaks in some ways to that massive change and adaptation, a lot of organizations needed to do it in terms of how they do their daily work. And I guess if you're a bigger bureaucracy that might take longer. But I find that really interesting, the kind of nimble response was so visible and so inspiring.

Nicola Browne:

Yeah. And I think there's been a few, in terms of demands, I mean, certainly what I've seen coming through. I actually, as this was emerging, I've been working on a pilot, digital campaigning project for Northern Ireland called Act Now. And as this kind of emerged, I pushed out on Twitter and launched it more visibly because it seemed like this would be exactly the space where more online tools were needed to make people's voices heard and to tie people into debates. And I guess because we live our lives online and offline now, it's how we reflect that in our activism. So it's not just one or the other, but how those two can kind of work together and bring out the best in each other's type, way of working. And that had... I mean, some of the issues that were coming forward were, we did a campaign around a local health diagnostics firm that had received huge amount of public money, but were selling COVID 19 tests privately, online too for a huge [inaudible].

Deepa Iyer:

Wow.

Nicola Browne:

So obviously the amount of outrage that was coming around this, people were feeling very... that was very unfair. And so one of our members quickly set up a petition that garnered about 10,000 signatures in a few days. And then what we were able to do was to ask those people who were just so motivated and wanted to act and do something, we asked them to phone the first minister and the deputy first minister's office and ask that company be nationalized. And they did. And they told me that their lines were inundated. And again, the way that change works, the company didn't get nationalized. But that company is now working with the health service. Change is never linear. I think you forget, you never really get what you ask for. You might get something a bit related to. It was just great to be able to see people be part of making that change at that time. When the people felt so helpless and people felt like everything was out of their control, it was really, just really heartening and encouraging to be able to see that happen.

Nicola Browne:

And for people to be part of that and to be able to tell people they were part of that when that time it was really needed. I think that's really important. And I think also discussions around care are another thing that I'm noticing. We're talking a lot about self care and mental health, but I think there's also a real opportunity to broaden that out and talk also about collective care. So why do we not only take care of ourselves, but how do we expand that through our education or through our awareness of barriers or paradynamics even in our own social activism groups or our own groups where we're working, how do we expand that to make sure that it's not just your own obligation to make sure you're okay. Because everyone's fighting against... I mean, Deepa speaks really well on this. And I love Deepa's work around capitalist white supremacy culture and the need to produce and the need to be on time and the need to meet deadlines in a way in which you feel like if you don't do those things, you have no worth in any kind of sphere.

Nicola Browne:

So I think it's really interesting to see how we can take this emphasis around care, which is coming so strongly around our NHS and our health workers. But can we do more than applaud? Can we take some of the things that we're attracted to that for a reason. So how can we implement that in our own lives and in our work so that we have care filled procedures in our work. And that we can again, building up to that sense of joy and solidarity that I really think is going to be so important in keeping everybody going and keeping everybody joyful in doing this work. Because I think exhaustion plays [inaudible] grow. You know, people who have the power would love us to feel defeated and exhausted. And I think there's too much that we've seen that counters that. People have power, they've exercised it and they've had impacts already. I've actually seen the International Budget Partnerships work independently, the monitoring work that's being done in the communities in real time.

Deepa Iyer:

Agreed. And it's really great to hear about what Act Now is doing and your work with them Nicola. And in the social change work that we do, we talked a little bit about how we're all fatigued, how it's this sense of like having to push constantly. But we've also talked about the fact that in this moment where the government often fails to show up that that's been exposed. But at the same time, we are seeing a reinforcement of community engagement and social change groups, really stepping up as they always have been.

Deepa Iyer:

So I wanted to ask you both about this idea of nurturing ourselves and our work. That I think Nicola alluded to with that collective care remark. So how are each of you nurturing and centering your own wellbeing as you continue this work? That's one question I have and a follow up I would have is, how important is it to connect in this way? Across countries, across constructed borders to learn about what we're all doing, but also to build a sense of comradery and solidarity. So I'd love to hear both of those, like your own personal practices around wellbeing and then the importance of having a connected network and what that does to also strengthen individual wellbeing and bring the joy that Nicola alluded to. So Phumeza, I'll start with you on that.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

I was talking to somebody about everyone saying, "Until we get back to normal," everyone else is like... I think somebody, I don't don't know if it was on social media, somebody was like, "What normal? Are you seriously expecting us to go back to normal at some point?" Which sort of resonated with how I feel a little bit. I think when the whole crisis started and before South Africa actually reported any cases, there was a lot of engagement with the news and developments in the crisis. But I think as soon as it sort of came closer, there was a lot of uncertainty and fear and I guess social media, fake news, information that is not complete sort of reinforced that fear, that we were just not wanting the virus to come to South Africa. Because we've been doing this work for all these years and because residents know what they've been experiencing, we knew that our government is going to make a lot of mistakes and so there was that fear.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And also the fear of the unknown, because this is a new virus and no one knows anything about it, it can change its nature. And I think for me as well, I was part of the people who were part of... who feel a lot of what this could mean, but I think what helped was trying to get calm and trying to get the right information and trying to engage with the right facts and just trying to understand what it is about. And I think when it got to South Africa, then we adults were confronted with having to deal with it. I think one thing I appreciate is the sort of instinct that activists and communities sort of had, is like, "Okay, it's here now and we have to do something." But one other thing, lastly, which Nicola mentioned, is for the first time I'm hearing comrades talking about self care. I'm hearing comrades talking about mental health. I'm hearing comrades talking about accepting that we can't do everything.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And for me, it sort of signifies a new era of our work, a new era of social justice work. Where automatically now we are all in this frenzy of doing this amazing work we're doing, but then a person can take a day and say, "Look, no. I'm taking a day for just personal self care." And for me, that has been amazing because I think for years, we didn't see that coming. Because as activists, we are always moving, we're always trying to do something. There's not a moment where we take time for ourselves. But I'm really appreciating what this has done to people taking care of themselves because I think we need to be healthy for us to take care of our communities.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

And I think people, the caution, the fact that we all, three of us in three different countries are talking about COVID and we engaging it in this manner, the virus has opened up new opportunities for drawing linkages across our work and across different parts of society. And there's different ways of organizing that are coming out which are very creative where people don't have to meet. I think we're going to cut a lot of money on funding proposals now for meetings and there's different creative ways. So I feel like we've adapted to the electronic means of communication, to how information is spreading, to how we actually confirm the right information, to how we take care of ourselves, to how we really communicate in between.

Deepa Iyer:

It's so true. And there is a greater awareness that you can't pour from an empty cup and you also have to recognize, and I know this is hard for me often, when my cup is actually empty, because I keep thinking there's something in it. But I think that's such an important point to also check on each other and the accountability so that we're taking care of our comrades as you said. And Nicola, what about you? Similarly, is there a network of folks that you rely on and how are you centering yourself during this time?

Nicola Browne:

One thing I think has been really heartening is that it's become really visible, the networks that you are a part of just as an individual, they are so visible now. Mainly because they're on your zoom screen like all the time and you see their faces. But I mean, from friends to family, to activist networks, to organizational networks, I mean, that has been just extremely positive. And fostering that sense of connection has just been really quite an amazing experience. And I think it kind of... There's a parallel because I mean, this virus can only be really addressed collectively. What you were saying Phumeza, we can't actually address it individually. We can only tackle it as a collective. And I feel like that should also extend to how we respond to building, rebuilding whatever is coming out of this. Again, we can also only do that as a collective.

Nicola Browne:

So again, it's really positive to see self care emphasis, the care emphasis and kind of thinking about relationships and fore grinding relationships. Hopefully a bit more than consumption and growth and is my house big enough and is my job good enough? I think we've become really much more aware of some of those things that are actually important and sustain us like art, like books. And like our families and people that we love and yeah. I mean, individually for me, I'm really fortunate, I live in like a highs in the state, but 20 minutes down the road is the shores of Belfast Lough. So I've been doing lots of walking and getting out in the fresh air, getting out into natures is so important.

Nicola Browne:

And I think that's kind of individually, what's also kept me going. The sense of movement and I think it's very easy. I mean, I was really fearful at start of the pandemic as well, just the uncertainty and not knowing how it would impact my family. I've got some of my family members work in the NHS and are nurses. So it was a really fearful time and I think at that point, moving and connecting with people was what helped. And again, going through, I think that's something I'm going to take away from this episode, is it waxes and wanes. Those things that are important, movement, connection, nature, just helping grow on it yourself in some of this, which is so uncertain.

Deepa Iyer:

Yeah. I love that. That really resonates with me as well. And it leads me to sort of my final question, which is, we've all talked about what are some practices we're building now that we want to sustain and preserve and bring into as Phumeza says, not back to normal, whatever we're heading towards. So I want to ask you this question based on a piece of writing that I've been really inspired by, by Arundhati Roy, who's a writer and activist based in India. And she recently, I would say, has given us a description for this pandemic, being a portal. It's a doorway between the old ways and a new set of visions.

Deepa Iyer:

I read her description as actually a call to action, being an activist and thinking about, well, what is it right that we want to take through that portal? What are the visions that we want to think about? And I think one of you mentioned this too earlier, what are the visions that we want to build as we move forward through the portal? And what do we want to preserve? Are there any gains, any practices that we want to preserve? So I'm curious if both of you could share just one to three ideas, visions or practices that we should be carrying through the portal with us in order to build a more equitable and inclusive society in Northern Ireland, in Cape Town in South Africa. So Nicola, I'll start with you.

Nicola Browne:

And I think one thing I'm taking from this is the sense of what's possible. I mean, in the UK certainly, things that were thought to be absolutely inconceivable and activists and people were told for decades, just couldn't be done, were done overnight with a stroke of a pen. Our NHS was redesigned practically within a week. I had people who I know who work there, who talked about high phenomenal. This is as an achievement to actually build another hospital and have it up and running and staffed and everyone making that happen. And there was no such... there was no idea this can be done. So I think the sense of what is now possible is something that I think we'll all take forward now. I think it'll be much harder for our governments and our decision makers to tell us that they can't do something. Because I think we've now seen what is possible and that that's actually about political will, which is in turn only about vested interests.

Nicola Browne:

So people who are more comfortable for it to be the way it is rather than what is actually doable. The other thing I'll take away is just what has sustained us, what has sustained me, what has sustained people around me. Noting what those things are, a sense of a slower pace, a sense of connecting with friends, particularly my female friends, my activist female friends, I think we've just had some amazing conversations through this, which have shown not only the kind of intellectual kind of plotting and thinking about what do we do, but also that sense of care in itself and those relationships. Yeah. And again, the bringing it back to joy and mischief and how can we infuse our work with that going forward.

Deepa Iyer:

Thank you. Phumeza what about you? What are you hoping we can take through the portal individually and collectively?

Phumeza Mlungwana:

I think this crisis has really forced us to deal and engage with our struggles, not only at a local, national but at a global sense. And I think that's going to help with a lot of engagements in the future. It's going to help with a lot of opportunities within our campaigns. It's going to help with a lot of opportunities with what and ideas with how our governments actually address a lot of the challenges that we had even before COVID. So I like the globalness of this struggle and how it's forcing us to think not only local but globally. And again, it's going to force us to adapt to whatever we get globally and adapt it to our local struggle.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

The second one, and I think it's said, I think throughout the conversation we'd be talking, it's said, it's this underlying idea that if you want to build communities and countries, it's not something you're going to do on one day. I think the pandemic has showed us that money's there, the amount of money that's input, but it has showed us, had our governments built our health systems over the years, I'm not saying we wouldn't be where we are, but we probably would be dealing with the crisis in a different way. But because we haven't invested in building our health systems, in building our communities, we're stuck with a much bigger problem than just COVID.

Deepa Iyer:

I also take heart in some of these campaigns that are coming out right now and hope that we can bring those lessons into whatever this new normal is that we're going to go into. I feel like I could talk to you both forever for like hours and hours, but I also want to obviously make sure that everyone gets care, which includes sleep and rest. But I just want to thank you both Phumeza and Nicola for this conversation. I really feel... I feel like you're part of a sisterhood and comrades that I've been lucky enough to develop around the world over the last number of years. And I'm so grateful to both of you inspired by you individually and obviously inspired by your visions and your work. So thank you for joining me on Solidarity Is This.

Phumeza Mlungwana:

You're welcome.

Nicola Browne:

You're welcome.

Deepa Iyer:

I'm so grateful to Phumeza Mlungwana and Nicola Browne for joining me on this month's episode of Solidarity Is This. I hope that like me, you are inspired by the work that they're doing in their home countries and also motivated by their cost to action and their visions of what an equitable and inclusive society should look like, what the role of government should be and how communities who are deeply affected and the people that are working in those communities and what those communities can build collective care and reinforce their visions and their work as well.

Deepa Iyer:

As all of the move through this pandemic, I am sending everyone healing energy and support. I hope that you're connected to community and that you are finding a little bit of a refuge in the conversations that we're featuring on Solidarity Is This. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or you can find the podcast on any platform where you listen to podcasts and you can also check out www.solidarityis.org or www.buildingmovement.org for the solidarity syllabus that accompany this podcast as well as other links. So with that, thank you so much for joining me. I'm Deepa Iyer and I will catch you on the next episode of Solidarity Is This.