Download PDFSisonke Revolutionary Movement (Sisonke) is an organisation from Orange Farm that mobilises communities to fight for service delivery and to unite the working class and to implement socialism. Sisonke also assists communities that face evictions to get their homes back, with a special focus on the orphaned who are evicted by their families after the passing of their parents.
Lucky Twala, who is a part of the leadership of Sisonke, said “When we formed Sisonke, we identified the challenges in the community in 2017, November 4th.” The founding members tested their strengths and decided to have a movement that can assist and fight struggles in society.
“Sisonke deals with fighting for service delivery and evictions, especially evictions of children when their parents are no longer around and people want to sell their houses. And, we also aim to fight for better education,” said Twala.
The organisation works hand-in-hand with organisations that fight for socialism and want to change the world. “We work with United Front, Gauteng Housing Crisis Community, the Department of Health in vaccinations and Sanca [South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence] on issues of drugs.” Sisonke also hosts community meetings every Thursday at 14:00 pm to discuss issues.
Some of their achievements include reversing 4 cases of eviction in Orange Farm. “We had challenged 4 cases of eviction and assisted and defended those families and until now they still live there.”
The challenges that their organisation face includes having women comrades who are unrecognised by men and communities that come to seek assistance or advice.
“It’s not easy because people undermine me as a young woman. People do not think I am capable of doing things,” said 21-year-old Keabetswe Mokoena from Orange Farm. Mokoena is a women comrade of Sisonke. Sisonke is known to have a lot of youth and women especially when participating in movements.
Mokoena said that people undermine them as youth, children and women when it comes to organising. “Most drug abusers prefer to speak to male comrades and it makes it difficult for us to understand them”, she said referring to a drug campaign that their organisation does with Sanca on rehabilitating substance abusers.
Mokoena said that they have tried to speak to them to get them to understand and know that the women are able to assist them just as well as the men. “Some had opened up to the idea while others still refuse.” Said Mokoena
To approach and address this issue the organisation hopes to have workshops that educate the communities about the capabilities of women and also to assist women on how to approach issues such as these to have their organisation and comrades especially women work efficiently with the community.
The organisation works hard to get the community active and do as many workshops as possible to get them to understand the difference between a community organisation and economic and political parties. As a participant of the recently past Winter school, Mokoena brings what she has learnt and picked up into her community and organisation.
“I try to tutor children and to do as much as I can to implement what I’ve learnt during the Winter School,” said Mokoena.
“What stood out for me most were the activities in the school, how comrades showed a lot of teamwork and trust for each other and also learning how to tackle problems within organisations,” said Keabetswe
This article was submitted on 26 September 2022. You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Karibu! Online (www.Karibu.org.za), and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
