A Different South Africa
I must tell you my latest bit of excitement! Ten minutes ago Brian Chinsamy called. He is the man who organised for me to get Canadian funding to teach RC at the District office. He wants to know how many classes I can teach a day! He has received funding for a year and wants to know if I can teach in the other districts. (There are eighteen districts in this province of Gauteng, and each one has about one hundred schools.) He had just phoned to get feedback from the district I am currently teaching in, and the District Officer was apparently "ecstatic" about the work I am doing and highly recommends that I work with all the other districts. She told him that last week during some conference at their work place, a conflict arose and some of those in my class intervened and with RC theory and experience resolved the issue.
He is writing a proposal and thinking of how to get me employed at the Department of Education for a year. I have said there are three main groups to work with: the District office people, the teachers, and the students. I will know next week if it will happen or not.
I will have to figure out a lot of things. Training teachers seems to be a priority, as well as perhaps getting a team together to do the work. Maybe I can get them to fund my training of other people. This is all slightly overwhelming! It means going very big in education. I am a little unclear about teaching RC within the department, in particular about how to organise it all in terms of the RC organisation. Is there anyone else doing similar work - teaching RC in organisations? I am quite clear about teaching this as RC and not naturalising it. RC will become part of education in this country.
Tessa Abramovitz
Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa