WITSIE4GOOD

SIMON SIZWE MAYSON SAYS WE NEED NOT BE SO AFRAID OF AREAS OUTSIDE OUR COMFORT ZONES.

BY UFRIEDA HO

When Simon Sizwe Mayson (MSc DP 2014) slips between the various community projects he has helped initiate it can make him seem a little invisible.

But his light touch is actually a super power enabling him to be a “changemaker” who connects people and initiatives. He believes it gives people space to find their own leadership potential; and encourages them to take greater responsibility and ownership of projects.

It’s an approach that’s made all the difference this winter as COVID-19 lockdowns hit hard in the community Mayson has called home for the past two years. Lorentzville is one of the Johannesburg East suburbs on the slope and rise of a valley that flanks the inner city; and it’s where Mayson, a PhD candidate in the Wits School of Architecture and Urban Planning, lives.

Lockdown rapidly turned to job losses and food insecurity for many families and small business owners in these vulnerable and easily overlooked communities. Thanks to networks that Mayson helped strengthen over the past two years, however, the community was able to respond to help themselves and each other.

Mayson managed to be part of a team that set up an emergency food response project before heading to family in Cape Town for the lower levels of lockdown. That he hasn’t been in Joburg overseeing the project the entire time speaks directly to his point that it’s not about topheavy leadership, but more about bonds, established over time. So many people working together means expertise can be pooled to maximum effect.

These “many people” are part of Makers Valley Partners (MVP), a community from Bez Valley to Bertrams, Lorentzville, Judith’s Paarl, Troyeville and New Doornfontein. They are a collective of local artists, crafters, urban gardeners, designers, waste reclaimers, metal and wood workers as well as owners of all sizes and kinds of businesses. Knowing each other better means more opportunities for collaboration, sharing and learning. It also means buying local and using local expertise, local suppliers, creators, labour and artisans. It enhances wellbeing and raises the economic status of more people.

The MVP network kicked in as hunger and desperation started to mark lockdown in South Africa. Their first initiative was to support local spaza shops, not large supermarket chains, to source supplies for food parcels. Volunteers collected data on families in need and food parcels were then issued via an SMS alert system to these households. The second initiative was a soup kitchen serving at three locations in the valley. The third initiative was to distribute COVID-19 information and personal protective equipment to locals.

There was also an additional project helping people start their own food gardens and to look after existing pavement food gardens.

Mayson says these initiatives are about immersive participant observation, forging community-driven solutions that are flexible, resilient and which ultimately focus on upending structural inequalities.

These interacting elements are what drives Mayson and informs his immersive approach to research. He is after all the researcher who moved into a flat-share in Yeoville to better understand migrant life in inner-city Joburg as he worked on the Yeoville Studio project – a two-year community-oriented research teaching initiative that the Wits School of Architecture and Planning and civil society organisations collaborated on between 2010 and 2012.

He ended up taking up the balcony space in the flat and subletting his room for the period he lived there. This is typical of high-density living and a survival strategy of many who try to establish themselves in the city.

Mayson has used real-life experience and insights to focus on finding locally appropriate solutions that build on a community’s existing networks.

He went on to work for the Johannesburg Development Agency focused on their inner-city projects before returning to his research work.

“I want to see and explore and to keep working within the overarching framework of wellbeing – of people and planet before profit, pushing the idea that we don’t have to be so afraid in areas outside our comfort zones. I think when more wealthier South Africans focus on wellbeing beyond ourselves or our family and friends, we will actually make more impact and be happier for it,” he says.

Mayson’s next project with MVP will interlink early childhood development projects. It is to keep evolving and strengthening the web of community – one Mayson is threaded through in his non-attached, but not detached way – showing that a light touch can also be powerful and make an impact.

SIMON MAYSON USES AN IMMERSIVE APPROACH TO HIS RESEARCH AMONG THE ARTISTS, GARDENERS, CRAFTERS, WASTE RECLAIMERS AND BUSINESS OWNERS THAT MAKE UP THE MAKERS VALLEY PARTNERS