The rainbow nation has an incredible superpower… it has the spirit of Ubuntu! The precise reason why Clint McLean launched the Ubuntu Army!
South Africa (09 June 2020) – Clint McLean started the Ubuntu Army shortly after South Africa went into lockdown. The group was established to help people connect and do as much good for others as possible. While the group grew legs and became a tool, a catalyst for change, Clint saw it for what it really was; the birth of a new rainbow nation!
The group’s description states that the ‘Ubuntu Army is a collective of ordinary, everyday, garden variety South Africans, harnessing their own peculiar skills to help the most vulnerable members of our society face COVID-19, primarily by making, donating, sourcing, funding and delivering masks and sanitizer to these marginalized communities.’
Clint has been in awe of what people are doing on the group. It inspired him to pen his thoughts about South Africans and the power we now have in our hands. At a time when South Africans are starting to grow tired and lose hope, Clint’s message may be what is needed to bolster our hearts and remind us to remain strong. Take a read below.
“I started Ubuntu Army two months ago. To be more precise, I started the Ubuntu Army Facebook group two months ago. The Ubuntu Army has always been here. I just happened to notice it, and give it a name. I’m not the first, and I really hope I’m not the last. In these two months, my life has changed. I no longer hammer steel and build furniture. And I never managed to rebuild my workshop during lockdown. My desk and whiteboard are chaotic and unresolved. And. I haven’t seen my sons very much lately. I’ve never been this busy. I’m tired. Really tired.
I’m also hopeful, and quietly excited, because I’ve realised, completely and clearly, during this journey with Ubuntu Army, that the people of South Africa hold the key to its redemption. To their own redemption. It’s not up to the politicians to save us. To save this country. It never was. It’s up to us. If we are going to find the rainbow in our nation, then we need to do it, despite the politicians, by getting to know each other. We are all responsible. Across the board accountability. No excuses, no exceptions.
The roadmap to our rainbow starts with compassion. We need to meet each other, with open hearts. To acknowledge each other, for who we are. To see each other, as we are. To accept each other, warts and all. A massive, proactive, meet-and-greet exercise in compassion. Not sympathy, but with the resolve to sit with each other, in each other’s darkness and through each other’s pain. To be present with each other. I am because we are. Ubuntu transcends politics and religion, condemning neither. It is love. It’s our way out of here. It unites us, despite differences in faith, race and creed. It’s as simple as that.
But effort is required. From everyone. No passive couch-sitting, waiting for everyone else to figure it out. Our system is broken. Our complaints are redundant. Politics is dead. We, the ordinary, garden variety South Africans, the Ubuntu Army, need to introduce ourselves, to each other. We need to get to know each other. Perhaps the roadmap to salvation starts with sharing a meal with relative strangers, with people we never really got to know. In townships, and suburbs, in settlements and kraals across the country, with people leaving their homes, their comfort zones, to visit others, in their homes. Rainbow dinner parties!
The lockdown has allowed introspection and rest. It has been a fantastic disaster, and ironically, despite the oppressive restrictions it has given us our choice back. We can choose how to travel from here. Along the same old, well-worn paths of division and blame, or up a new path, of shared food (and dinner tables), that ends, like a dream, in a rainbow, a rainbow nation, where people care for each other. Ubuntu.”
You can join the Ubuntu Army on Facebook here.