Holding the torch for a brighter future

Known as “the saint of the townships”, Helen Lieberman, the founder of Ikamva Labantu, delivers social support services to township communities. Meaning “future of the people”, the organisation embodies Lieberman’s commitment to empowering South Africa’s most vulnerable.

“In many cases, because of the poverty and the history of our country, the real people of our country are still suffering and living in the most terrible way,” said Lieberman. “For the rest of my life, if I can, I will continue until I can see that every person has something in their lives that enables them to survive.”

With three million meals provided annually, 1 900 children impacted by early childhood development training programmes annually, and 1 200 needy elders reached daily, Ikamva Labantu helps her to fulfil this mission.

In accepting the Kirsh Family Lifetime Achiever Award in honour of Helen Suzman on 19 November, Lieberman gave the Absa Jewish Achievers a sobering dose of reality. Expressing her gratitude for the award, which she described as a humbling experience, she highlighted the unspeakable hardship that much of South Africa’s population still endures.

Lieberman’s journey started with daily visits to the townships during the apartheid era. “She couldn’t stand by and see the devastation going on around her, she had to make a difference,” said Philip Krawitz, protector of the Ikamva Labantu Charitable Trust. Beaten up by the apartheid police, she nearly lost the sight in one eye, yet she remained dedicated to facilitating change.

“My experience is that we haven’t understood the wonder of our African people, people that I have worked with for 60 years,” she said. “I’ve done so as a volunteer and I’ve done so in the spirit of knowing that each day, I get up very early because I know that the people I’m holding hands with, are also getting up. I need to be there early, to hear what we need to do and how we need to do it.

“We allow our communities to lead us to the point where they need our intervention,” Lieberman said in explaining Ikamva Labantu’s collaborative approach. “And then our intervention is respectful. All we do is create the right environment and the right skills within the community. And they get on with it. We’re able to become participatory in a way that nobody feels threatened and everybody can’t but give of their best.”

Encouraging the event’s attendees to commit to doing just one deed to uplift someone outside of our community, Lieberman suggested giving school shoes to a child or funding an extra lesson for a student so that they can matriculate and study further.

“Or leave here saying, ‘I’m going to look at an old person living in a piece of tin, a person that served us as a domestic and scrubbed and cleaned and has remained with nothing because we don’t pay our domestics what they deserve,’” she said. “I’m not being judgemental, it’s just that I carry it every day.

“I don’t pray, but as a Jewish woman, I live every day for what I’ve read in our teachings that we as Jews should do. I’m hoping that my not-so-kind speech will allow you all to hold the torch with me in our future for South Africa.”