| SAPLER Population Trust | |
| Splendidly Alive People Within Limited Environmental Resources | |
Imagine a South Africa that Works
SAPLER's message is very, very simple: Why not get a universal voluntary family planning programme going in all of Southern Africa? "Universal" simply means that you leave out no one at all. It will cost more to reach those people who live in isolated, distant areas, but that should not be a consideration.
There are currently men who don't want their wives to have fewer children. Our answer is to communicate with them in a direct and friendly way.
Where the health services are successfully catering for the family planning needs of the area - then that is fine, but at the moment clinics are often overworked and inaccessible.
SAPLER's experience and our survey show that the main reason for people not using family planning services is that these services are not well understood and the issues have not been thought through.
The immediate, emergency answer is to get special-purpose mobiles wherever they are required. The long term cost-effective answer is to have grassroots family-planners in all communities and well-organized transport for people who want sterilizations and vasectomies.
The missing thread in our development programmes is the bold and clear recognition that an excellent family planning outreach will help everything else.
Peer group pressure prevents people saying this. This operates not among grassroots people, but among politicized people and academics.
The "politically correct" talk about "sexual reproductive health" which they define as "a state of complete physical,. mental and social well-being' (Cairo document). The Alex students (see insert) talk about population and water and overcrowding and disease.
Rupert Lorimer, who headed the Lorimer report on the environment, estimates that in 1900 South Africa was 15 percent desert or semi-desert. Today this figure is 50 percent and in 20 years' time it will be 70 percent.
Simple, Humanly Correct Answers
"But are we not politically correct?" asked Dr Harmeet Shan-Randhawa, our new projects organizer.
Indeed we are, if by PC you mean accepting all people as equally human, whatever their race, colour, creed, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability. I would like to use the term, "humanly-correct", because this could include the clear thinking and ecological awareness needed if we are to give quality of life to all those categories.
When Dr Motlana and I, Ann Weinberg, were young, it was considered responsible not to have more than two children. This is why we put it forward as a SAPLER goal.
The idea was originally put forward by people educated in biology and geography because they saw it as a way for people not to do more than replace themselves.
This idea is now discredited, because people do not die when their two children are born. There are often four or five generations all alive at the same time. This is why China keeps growing, even though it has a one-child policy.
Women's rights and health people saw our two-child proposal as monstrous. It seemed to them to be anti-choice and prescriptive. In fact what we discovered was that the government had been promoting the two-child family for years. We have found poor rural people and informal settlement people who say, "two-child is best" even if they are illiterate. It seems that the government radio programmes have reached them.
Some people also work it out for themselves. There is a group of women in QwaQwa who have decided to have no children at all, in order to escape from the poverty trap.
We found that the Population Department who were successfully promoting the two-child idea as a concept would have absolutely nothing to do with seeing that family planning services were easily accessible.
We then did our survey on the unmet need for family planning. We documented successful grassroots programmes here and elsewhere and suggested what could be done. All over the world family planning services lag far behind the wish to use them. We reprinted an article from the international magazine, "People and the Planet".
Entitled "Reaching the Hard to Reach", this article shows that "uncertain users" - people who don't understand the side effects, or people whose husbands disapprove of them using contraceptives, or people who live far from the clinics, or people who work and who find the clinics closed outside working hours - and above all people who have never before used family planning methods - all these people can be reached, and in those countries where they are reached the birth-rate plummets.
SAPLER would like to thank all its members for their generous donations and to welcome those newcomers who have found us out and who have included donations in their initial membership amounts.
Membership is annual. Even if you pay in November you would still have to pay again in 1996. We keep our administration costs to an absolute minimum.
Our membership fee is R30. However, we are happy to put anyone on our list who genuinely cannot afford this amount but who would like to receive our newsletters. A nominal amount of R5 would be sufficient.
We also have an exchange list with anyone in the same field. Some of these organizations pay membership fees and others do not. That is their choice.
This is our new sending-out newsletter for enquirers as we are running out of earlier newsletters. For a combined package of the Mission Letter, Newsletters 1-4, and the Enviroteach articles we ask for R20.
We still do have large quantities of the Mission Letter. Schools find this useful for discussions and projects and we will send a package of 20 for R10 to them or to any other interested organizations.
Johannes Jordaan has managed to fundraise money to buy out the remainder of his book, "Population Growth - Our Time Bomb". he will send as many copies of this book to SAPLER as we require. We will charge R10 per copy to cover our expenses.
We are now selling copies of our survey, "Family Planning Motivation, Support and Services as an Essential Part of Population Stabilisation in South Africa" for R30.
Cheques or postal orders should be made out to "SAPLER" and sent to Box 51446, Raedene, 2124.
Most people in South Africa, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, advantaged or disadvantaged now understand the population issue.
Our two-child petition in Alex was so successful that we stopped doing it. There is a saying in Alex, "The third child eats from the dustbin". It is just too difficult to cope with several small children when conditions are poor.
At a global level, conflict and violence escalate because of pressure on resources. No amount of "conflict resolution" can hide the fact that we have run out of topsoil and water.
Norman Myers in his book, "Ultimate Security, writes, "As too many people make too many demands on too few farmlands, water stocks, and other necessities of daily life, they increasingly resort to force to ensure their share.
Examples abound. In a world of growing shortages, there will be no shortage of further examples of environmentally inspired violence whether high profile or law key, local or widespread, distant or next door, recognized as environmentally derived or not."
Our Winterveldt nompilo, Edward Mabunda, states, "RDP is not going to work if we keep on having children every year."
A SAPLER-nompilo is a person informed on all issues concerning social economics, environmental deterioration, planning a family, contraceptive methods and STD prevention.
Around Bloemfontein a wonderful plan is starting to be put into action - small agricultural. holdings which can help feed the town without massive transport costs and which give previously landless people a chance to farm.
But in QwaQwa, South Bop and in the Kuruman farming area people are still having an average of five children. When those children grow up will they not resent the owners of those holdings? "Why can't we have a share?" they will say.
That there are rich people and poor people is "not fair". This is behind all the talk of "development" put forward by the "politically correct" (the PCs). It is "not fair" that the poorest section of the community should be asked to have fewer children.
But what if the poorest section actually are quite happy to have few children? What if the men in those areas respond very readily to discussions about economics and the environment? SAPLER's policy is a fully-informed South Africa in which we all problem-solve together.
The Cairo document on population, the Green Paper and the document, "What Not to Say", all deny our ultimate limits. (An economist in the 1980s worked out that if all white people gave up all their wealth, every black person would get Rl 00 once.)
Kader Asmal has begun a realistic plan for clearing our water catchment areas of trees which are currently soaking up the underground water. Soon many dried-up rivers will be flowing again.
The energy people have started a 20-year rural power plan - based on solar heating!
All that needs to happen now is that we get equally direct in limiting the total population of Southern Africa. The Cairo conference prided Itself on "thinking about individuals and not about numbers". What sort of virtue is this? If the numbers grow it is the individuals who will suffer - in their millions - and it is the poorest who will suffer first and worst.
It is common knowledge that urbanized people who have good education tend to limit their families. But not in the absence of good family planning services. Soweto's fertility rate dropped dramatically from six to two - when family planning was introduced.
Democracy is leading to a greater sharing out of social services. We have the RDP. We have hundreds of organizations with the magic word "development" in them.
But development without a good family planning outreach does not limit the population, whereas a good family planning outreach without any other sort of development does always limit the population.
We have people tackling water and energy and food. We have people concentrating on overall community upliftment and self-help. What we need now is a structure which ensures family planning for all. We need organization and leadership. We need good management at the top and we need good communication at grassroots.
SAPLER suggested the word "RESA" to stand for "Reach Every South African" with good family planning motivation, support and services. I would now make that "S" stand for "Southern". Our neighbours have no hang-ups about overpopulation. We could co-operate with them in such a scheme.
The scheme has to be cost - effective. Grassroots workers trained to do injections and hand out pills have proved extremely effective. These workers have time to discuss side-effects and best methods with their clients. There is continuity. AND THE MEN GET USED TO SEEING THEM AROUND!
Once some people begin using contraceptives, other people get the idea.
SAPLER has a pilot scheme in Winterveldt which could be repeated a thousand times over, although not in exactly the same way, because every situation is different. Different projects can be planned with different communities. The idea of carrying on doing abstract research into all this is costly, time-wasting and unnecessary. Just go in there and do what works.
Marina Clarke's nompilo-scheme in the Middelburg area was not carefully researched before she started. She simply saw a need and then worked with the community on an answer. Records can be kept as the project goes on its way.
This is what Dr Liz Standing does in the informal areas around Durban. She says that asking people if they want her to go in is a waste of time. They are always suspicious because they do not understand what she is offering. So she sets up in a school playground and gradually people start to trust her - and she records as she goes.
Nompilo means, "I give you love, help and care." A SAPLER -nompilo gives love, help, care and information.
This document is worthless. In fact it is worse than worthless, because:
1. People are utterly confused by it. They phone SAPLER and say, "'What do you want us to do about the Green Paper?" I reply, "I don't know."
2. People not in the field think that "something is being done about population".
The writers are misinformed about ecology. They say, "Resources are infinite." But of the resources which really matter, without which we cannot survive, only the sun and the wind are infinite. Water and topsoil and air are finite. Why were geographers and environmentalists not consulted? For that matter why do South Africa's environmentalists not offer their services?
The writers believe in a simple development/fertility equation. They believe that you can measure how well development is going by how fast the fertility rate is coming down, as if dollops of development result in precise reductions of fertility.
I could give hundreds of examples of where the opposite is true.
In Mexico City very poor women have only two children. When women from this group emigrate to the United States they have five! Social security and the absence of fulfilling jobs and the love of children - that's what does it.
In the Northern Province a water engineer told us this story: He put a pump in a village where all the teenage girls had spent their mornings in school and their afternoons fetching water. When he came back a year later to check the pump all these girls had babies or were pregnant.
Am I being disrespectful to these girls? Not at all. I can empathize with them. Having been a widow for seven years I understand what boredom plus sexiness can lead to.
Now for the opposite: the QwaQwa women who opted for no children. For our overseas readers let me explain that QwaQwa symbolizes non-development. These women made the choice to have no children to escape from poverty.
MOST BABIES HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT NOT BY INTENTION. SAPLER's foremost goal is that there should be no unplanned, unconsidered, unwanted babies in South Africa.
People who think seriously about what humans are doing to the planet - the poor through need, the rich through greed - no longer just advocate the two-child family. They advocate one child, or no children. And they advocate halving the number of cars - not doubling them, as we are presently doing. Many solutions reach the SAPLER office such as:
1. People around the world (including one in South Africa) are now proposing to poison themselves and the rest of humanity.
2. More humane is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Les Knight who founded this movement says that humans are hopeless. We are "exotic invaders" ( just like bluegums or the Mauritius thorn in SA).
Les Knight is not a misanthropist. He is a cheerful teacher of adolescents, who thinks that humans are 1000 times more worthwhile than any other species - but we are simply not compatible with the biosphere.
He himself had a vasectomy before having any biological children. He then adopted a daughter. She has one biological child and her husband accepted a wedding present of a vasectomy from Les after that one child was born.
People are welcome to join VHEMT, however many children they now have - as long as they agree not to have any more.
3. Groups who feel that we should all stop having children for a while until the earth is back in shape, and until we can change the conditions which have produced so much extreme poverty.
4. SAPLER's answer: Our only hope now is the free spread of intelligence. The last thing we need is the confining chains of "WHAT NOT TO SAY".
Acknowledge the problems honestly, and then look for answers with splendidly alive minds. This will maximize self-help for individuals and communities.
Our practical approach is to offer pop-lim information alongside family planning help, together with any other help that we can easily offer at the same time, such as curing infant diarrhoea, preventing AIDS etc.
A brilliant, beyond yes-and-no idea has come from Portland, Oregon: RESPECT FOR LIFE. Their logo is a handshake in a circle with, around the top, "PRO-CHOICE" and around the bottom "ANTI-ABORTION".
"Almost all abortions are caused by unwanted conceptions. Methods of preventing these conceptions are numerous. It's not impossible to end the need for abortions by the next century, but as long as our energies remain divided, it's highly unlikely. Respect for Life would like to help change that.
This organization promotes vasectomy as the most cost-effective, lowest-risk contraceptive method. They have sent us copies of their car-sticker, "Vasectomy Prevents Abortion". We will send 20 of these free to the first 20 people who request it, but please don't ask for one unless you intend to put it on your car!
A black, anti-abortion, feminist friend of mine loves this idea. That it gives men a chance to be responsible is an additional benefit.
Congratulations to Aubrey of Boksburg for being the first South African to encourage black men to have vasectomies, and to our own Dr Harmeet Shan-Randhawa for introducing the concept of "Rainbow Vasectomies" to Winterveldt.
Childlessness for all those who do not passionately and overwhelmingly want a child is another useful thread in our struggle to save the planet.
An organization based in Washington State has sent us their newsletter - which caters for all those who feel alone in their decision not to have children, whatever their motivation. The reason may be that you have simply not managed to find the right person with whom to have children - but the result for the planet is fewer children. In the past people felt pressurised to marry and have children. Now they can be welcomed. Addresses for the above organizations are available from SAPLER.
A document with this title has been sent to the staff of the Population Development Programme (PDP). The PDP has been doing population education with communities completely openly for many years.
This document states:
1. Avoid any victim blaming e.g. you are. poor because you have many children.
2. Avoid implying or making a direct linear causal relationship between population trends and poverty or any aspect thereof (housing shortage, infant mortality, illiteracy, malnutrition etc.)
3. Population issues include the whole gamut of development issues in so far as they impact on population trends (fertility, mortality and migration) or in so far as population trends impact on development. For this reason, we should not focus specifically on fertility, but rather on the need to integrate an awareness of all population trends into development planning and into the assessment of the impact of those development plans.
4. No focus on fertility by promoting the small family.
5. There is no need to link the development message at each point to fertility. For example, promoting women's empowerment is enough in itself; one doesn't need to add that such empowerment will lead to a lowering of the birth rate. A better view is to see the goal as improving quality of life, rather than lowering the fertility rate.
6. Avoid being didactic or patronising; avoid having only male speakers as the main imparters of the message: likewise avoid using older people to convey messages to younger people - ensure the incorporation of young people's views and promote young people as responsible decision-makers.
7. Avoid making women the entire focus - men too play a role in development; in the subordination of women; in teenage pregnancies; in violence etc. They must be addressed.
8. Avoid implying or referring directly to different 'cultures', 'people' or 'nations' within South Africa.
SAPLER does not believe in this approach. We talk to people and find out where they are coming from and tell them how we see things. Then we problem-solve solutions.
Unfortunately many people are being intimidated by "What Not to Say". I listened to an intelligent family planner answering questions on a radio programme. She knew her field well and answered everyone's questions thoughtfully.
Then a caller said, "What about the shortage of water?"
I could feel this woman thinking - albeit unconsciously - "This is the moment where I get judged by my peers."
"The water problem has nothing to do with contraception. The issue is resource distribution. You've got to provide access to water - then women would get involved in income-generating activities. The people would like water, housing and education and only once they had those things will they be interested in contraception."
She must at this point have thought, "But am I not saying that black women are weak in the head?" for she went on to say, "But rural people do want contraception even in the really under-developed areas. A mobile went into Mpumalanga at 6am and at 6pm there was still a queue, and the mobile had run out of contraceptives."
Even the nicest men must be thinking by now that women are after all hysterical -and illogical, as used to be thought, but it isn't that. It is the power of group-think. If you say something wrong you will be ostracized. Everyone wants to belong.
Design is the key word for getting ourselves out of the mess. There is one sort of "development" that will save us, and that is ecologically-clever urbanization.
We need to start now with a vision of how we could live more equitably, consuming much less, and still enjoying ourselves.
Richard Rogers, who has currently been giving the Reith Lectures on SAfm, describes towns which already exist - where children roam freely and crime is almost absent. Work, school and living all happen in the same area.
But this is already happening here in an area of Winterveldt! The police, the women's organizations, the churches and the civics have made a plan: everyone knows everyone else, and strangers are eyed with suspicion until proved innocent. All citizens have a special whistle to blow when there is the slightest sign of trouble. All "dongas" have been broken down. A "donga" is a roofless, abandoned house where rapes used to take place and guns and loot were hidden.
The world is looking to us for answers so let's show them. Let's design urban villages with rickshaw bicycles and wind-up radios and no beef hamburgers and no private cars, and then add art and architecture and music and dance and stories - sustainable beauty and sustainable fun. We can do it.
On a population programme in 1991 a caller named Tumie phoned in:
"I'm becoming a fan nowadays I'm listening to 702, but in any case I thought I should comment. I'm not going to claim to be an expert in all this or just because I'm black you know I'm an expert in black issues, but what I'm trying actually say is that for instance my grandmother had about 14 children - my mother is the 14th child - and during that time my grandmother has never been to school all her life, OK.
During that time my grandmother had a farm, had a bakery, had a butchery, had land you name it - cows and everybody was being fed, OK. Right - I'm not going to claim that other people were doing as well as my grandmother.
"But as time went by a lot of technology was new, by 1977 when I was in Standard 8 birth control was all over the place."
Denis Beckett, "You presumably don't have 14 children?"
"My father had three. I have one. What I'm saying is you don't have to be white to have commonsense or prioritize. But let's assume you have too many children because you are not aware of birth control it doesn't necessarily make you stupid - you see what I'm saying? A lot of people are maybe having a lot of children because they don't have access or they are quite ignorant..."
Denis, "They would say it is God's will? - that it is black tradition to see children as a gift from God and not to worry about the consequences?"
"Black people would not throw away children, or give them up for adoption or put them in the dustbin ... if a woman found herself in the predicament of an extra baby she would say, "Oh God well, it's God's will to have this child. But most people prioritize irrespective of what sort of education they have. They know if I have three it doesn't make sense - I don't work, how can I have three?"
Denis, "So they don't want children to defeat the whites?"
"That's actually quite nonsense. We've always been many ... we are many as it is, OK. What we are saying is let's do something about it. Maybe let's have more birth control clinics running all over the place. Let's just not make a a cultural issue for blacks."