‘Jack in a Shack’ reminisces on forgotten people

SUZANNE BELLING

PHOTOGRAPH BY SUZANNE BELLING

Jack Bloom, a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature since 1994, leader of the DA in the legislature from 2011 till 2014, took her credo a step further: “Go experience for yourself,” he said. “Don’t forget the forgotten.”

At a crossroads in his life, Bloom decided to spend 30 nights – one evening every month – with the “forgotten” in their shacks throughout Gauteng.

It started on August 21, 2011 when he visited the scene of a devastating shack fire in Jeppestown in central Johannesburg. Fifty-six shacks had burnt down through a fire started by a paraffin stove.

“I spoke to an elderly man, who had been there since 1980. He cried on my shoulder and I could easily have cried with him but I held back, which I regretted later,” Bloom wrote in his newly-launched book “30 Nights in a Shack – a Politician’s Journey”, launched at the Rabbi Cyril Harris Community Centre last week Wednesday.

Bloom returned to the scene of the fire, spending the night with the old man and his four sons in their partially rebuilt shack. “There was no shelter from the elements, as there was no roof.”

He wrote that there was an open fire and the smell “assaulted my nostrils” and he thought of the effects on children. He was cold in his sleeping bag, did not sleep much and was awoken by a cell phone alarm at 04:00, wondering how the phone was charged without electricity.

After his first night, Bloom appealed for help publicly. He resolved it would not be “out of sight, out of mind” – hence his decision to spend a night each month with a “forgotten” community.

His next visit was to Stinkwater which had one tap for 8 000 people. The bigger problem was that water in the area was contaminated by a collapsing sewerage system.

Bloom received extensive recognition and publicity for his campaign, and was dubbed “Jack in a Shack”.

On his visits to the poor communities, he came across Doctor Hlahane, who had rescued young men from a life of crime and drugs and formed a choir. Bloom saw to it that they were fitted out with black suits and the choir members chose to complete their outfits with blue DA T-shirts!

Bloom embarked on projects in the shanty towns, including providing some with solar lighting, tackling the problem of a rat infestation in Alexandra township and getting “down and dirty” by sanitising pit toilets, using enzymes and bacteria.

Bloom’s journey changed his way of thinking. He became Jewishly observant, donned a yarmulke, blessed people and started davening regularly. He even lit Chanukah lights, the flames of which blended with the candle-lit home of shack-dwellers.

This influence was a result of his newfound association with Chabad and especially with Rabbi David Masinter, director of Chabad House in Savoy. He became a regular shul-goer at Rabbi Masinter’s shul in Riverclub.

He visited the grave of the late Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson in Crown Heights, New York, which increased his faith and observance.

In all, Bloom visited over 100 informal settlements. Some of the shacks were beautifully furnished and had tended gardens. His project improved the living conditions of many and his book records his journey in a most readable and enlightening way.

He was really “leading from the front”.