Walk A Mile In Her Shoes

This is the story of Keorapetse Makole, an individual who single handily put shoes on the feet of hundreds of children through driving a social media campaign. She emotionally narrates the story of a broken community, reliving a journey that brought a lot of hope to the small community of Brits, a rural township in the North West Province of South Africa. Makole shares her experience.

By Seneo Setilo Matlapeng

TRC: What conceived your compassion towards community development? KM: Following my graduation as a trained journalist, I have struggled to find a stable job for the past fifteen years. Having idle time on my hands, and trying hard not to be consumed by depression, I decided to serve in a rural-based Non-Profit Organisation(NPO) which exposed me to a world I never thought existed so close to home in my province.

I searched and realized that about 80 percent of the learners in my community wore torn-out shoes, and some had no shoes in the middle of a cold winter's day. It broke my heart. This also brought back the painful memory of an incident where I had to go to school on a rainy day with torn shoes with water seeping through from holes I didn't even know existed. On that day I cried to my father about it and he said something that stayed with me to this day. He told me to place a piece of cardboard on the foot of my shoes and walk to school. It was so uncomfortable, and throughout the day I couldn't concentrate, I was thinking about my torn shoes with a cardboard sole. So when I saw these kids walking kilometers to school with no shoes, I immediately felt inclined to help them because I understood exactly how they felt. I remembered how this could influence their learning capacity during class. TRC: What steps did you take to help the children? KM: It was towards the end of 2021 when we visited Rooikopies Primary School in the outskirts of Brits in the North West Province to donate sanitary towels when it hit me that the problem is far worse than I had imagined. I also realised that this did not just affect the girl child, but the African child in general.

After a restless and very uncomfortable afternoon accepting the reality around me, I started to investigate the living conditions and day-to-day lives of the learners of Rooikopies Primary. My preliminary and most heart-wrenching findings were that most of the learners were children of farm workers. The parents were mostly single parents who made money from the farms and plantations of the Brits area. I discovered that most of these parents start their days as early as 3 in the dark of the morning, walking to the farms kilometers away. Because of the long distance, they can go for the entire week without seeing their children, leaving the children to take care of themselves. This explained why most of the learners who glared at me with hope on that day were without shoes. TRC: How then did you decide to intervene? KM: In December 2021, I took to all my social media accounts to publish a shoe drive campaign urging all those in my circle to donate second-hand shoes or include a pair of new school shoes in their Christmas Holidays shopping list. I was humbled and brought to tears by the response I got from those who saw my posts because it shows that there is a generation of a change in Africa, a kind generation that sees no boundaries; one with no prejudice, and sees no colour. There is a generation that wants to unite and build a better Africa.

TRC: How successful was the drive? KM: I collected close to two hundred and forty pairs of school shoes, all raised from my social circle. From these shoes, two hundred pairs were brand new, whilst about forty were pre-worn. TRC: What did you do with these shoes? KM: To celebrate the month of February which is universally known for celebrating love, I went back to Rooikopies Primary and gave the shoes to their new deserving owners. TRC: How has this act of kindness impacted the community? KM: The campaign drive was honestly an eye-opener. It revealed that more needs to be done in this community, which also means we have our work cut out for us this year. I learned that children need more than shoes. They need uniforms as well. I am now working on an all Rooikopies Primary School uniform drive to ensure that dignity, hope, confidence, and self-worth are restored in the lives of the learners. What humbles me is that my elder brother, Karabo "Blunt Moya" Makolehas has been influenced and is motivated to work on this campaign with me.