White family is back home afte

White family is back home after living for a month in Mamelodi shack

The Hewitts left the comfort of their home in Pretoria to experience everyday life in a South African township.

White family is back home afte

The Hewitts’ month in a Mamelodi shack is over. Julian, his wife Ena and their two little daughters lived for the month of August in a 9m² one-room shack with a communal tap and ablutions and no electricity for cooking and lighting, next door to their domestic worker.

They left the comfort of their home in Pretoria to experience everyday life in a South African township, where people survive on an average income of R3,000 per month. The Hewitts’ aim was to create a broader conversation of the role that empathy can play in promoting a healthy democracy.

“We want our children to grow up in this country and we don’t want them to be unaware of the way people live so it’s an eye-opener for us and for them. It’s more about changing ourselves than it is about changing anyone else,” Ena said at the beginning of their Mamelodi experience.

hewitts in mamelodi

Before starting their challenging month in Mamelodi, Julian and Ena visited Nigel and Trish Branken, the Christian white couple who, two years ago, gave up their six-bedroom Midrand home to live with their five children, now six, in a three-bedroom high-rise apartment in Hillbrow, the heart of white fear in downtown Johannesburg. Visiting the Brankens was for Julian and Ena an occasion to ask them all important questions about personal safety, the children’s safety, and what challenges they had faced.

The Brankens and the Hewitts have encountered praise as much as disapproval for their decision to try and experience the hardship faced by most South Africans.  The families’ possibility to rely on their ample income in case of emergency has led many to judge their challenge as ‘pretentious’. Julian and Ena Hewitt have been accused of “making a mockery of poverty.” They have received angry tweets such as “Hope the paraffin stove falls over and you people burn in that shack,” and “Mamelodi people must burn them in that shack.”

But anger has not been the only response to their challenge to the white South African’s status quo. Relatives and friends also had strong reservations about the risks involved in their venture. “Apparently we were being reckless and irresponsible parents by willingly opening our children to the multitudes of social ills that ekasi life is ‘synonymous’ with from illness, lack of seat belts on taxis to violence and child rape.”

However, the Hewitts were overwhelmed by the love shared by the people around them. “They understood and appreciated why we were there. Real life should be the litmus test, not academic or social discourse,” wrote Julian in the closing page of their Mamelodi for a Month blog.

Hopefully, the Hewitts’ experience will spark a broader dialogue on the necessity of authentic and concrete efforts to bridge cultural chasms.

For updates on their experience, visit their blog:

http://mamelodiforamonth.co.za/