News

There is alchemical magic in collaboration. When we each bring our own unique strengths, experience and insights to serve a common purpose, we make magic together. We offer what is uniquely ours and at the same time merge our efforts into wider processes involving other people contributing their own particular talents, skills and perspectives. When these efforts flow generatively, our co-creations as collectives far surpass what any of us could achieve alone.

November 11th marks Armistice Day, on which the First European War of 1914-1918 officially came to an end, with millions dead. This “war to end all wars” did not end war; and this month’s newsletter is written with a heavy heart as violent armed conflict accelerates across our continent and in west Asia. The trauma caused by war is far reaching. Its immense harms shatter societies for generations. War targets not only people but our environment, causing violence to human and animal bodies, soil, water, and air, including through the deployment of military "forever chemicals" and because so many armaments remain unexploded in the ground, where they are a menace for decades to come.

There was a flutter of excitement in my Cape Town neighbourhood when a lone baboon settled himself on the rooftops adjoining our house. It wasn’t long until the neighbourhood WhatsApp group crackled with comments. Having just moved suburbs, this was a new experience for me and I was slightly surprised at the intensity and tone of some of the posts. It tends to be a conversation that really polarises people but does it have to?

I am delighted to have joined Mycelium Media Colab a couple of months ago. This came following years-long collaboration and mentoring with one of the amazing members of the Network, Vanessa Farr. It was finally the right time to make a stronger North-Africa-South-Africa cross-continent connection. The ties that bind us, beyond belonging to the same beautiful continent, are rooted in shared struggles and common destinies. As I embark on this journey by becoming a mushroom of the mycelium,  I am very concerned by the pressing reality of climate change, an undeniable force reshaping our lives and challenging our very existence.

We are now deep into one of the coldest and wettest winters experienced for some time in the Western Cape, with persistent warnings of ‘disruptive rain’ that may result in flooding of roads and informal settlements, disruption to essential services, dangerous rock and mudslides and the potential for remote communities to be cut off from assistance. As our government drafts its first Climate Change Bill, we’re more aware than ever that climate change is not on the horizon, but already our lived experience.

Reading through the stories and notices in this month’s newsletter, I am struck by how much is being done around the world to try and shift humanity onto a transitional pathway to a better life for all, including nature and all the life forms it supports. And then, as always, I spend way too much time pondering why nothing is changing or at least changing fast enough to avert the ecological – and subsequent social collapse – that we know is coming. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the level at which work is done or the level at which it is reported. There are big international programmes and projects, national level commitments to activities and then millions of people-led and often grassroots initiatives – but where is the middle?