The main Jimmy Carter Work Project site in Durban, a coastal city of 3.2 million residents on the Indian Ocean, is significant as the location from which thousands of Indians and black Africans forcibly were removed by South Africa’s apartheid government of the 1960s. Houses were torn down, and the area was cleared to enforce racial segregation and open up the sought-after real estate for white occupation.
Soon, this land of past racial injustice will become a place where people of all races come together June 3-7 as part of the JCWP 2002 to help 100 South African families in need build simple, affordable houses during the weeklong blitz.The overall project includes an additional 900 houses to be built during the year throughout Africa and the Middle East, which will make it the largest-ever JCWP. Dedication ceremonies for all 1,000 houses are scheduled for the final day of the build.
JCWP 2002 will continue Habitat’s long history of building houses and reconciliation in Africa. Habitat founder and president Millard Fuller and his wife, Linda, first began building simple, decent houses with the poor in 1973 in Mbandaka, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).Those early houses were built in the “health strip” once used by Belgians to separate Africans from Europeans. The project’s success inspired a name change for the site— from Bokotola, meaning “the person who does not like others,” to Losanganya or “reconciler and re-unifier”—and established Habitat’s work as a vehicle for reconciliation and a symbol of hope in Africa and around the world. For information about JCWP 2002 or to help sponsor a house, please e-mail HFHI’s Africa/Middle East headquarters in South Africa at info@habitatame.org.za. To request a volunteer application, e-mail Rita Clemens at rclemens@hfhi.org or call (800) 422-4828, ext. 2272.
—Tilly Grey is the correspondent for HFHI in Africa and the Middle East. |
