Pastoral care and the challenge of poverty : when opening hearts and minds create possibilities in a marginalised school community

Abstract

In the „coloured‟ community of Scottsville in the Western Cape, the historical legacy of political violence and abuse, combined with the current social hierarchies of violence, control and abuse, have serious consequences for Scottsville‟s young people. These traumas and the associated discourses create a culture of fear, distrust, hopelessness, humiliation and silence amongst the majority of the young people. I have employed feminist-poststructuralist analyses in order to grasp the complex nature of the challenges of „coloured‟ poverty. Foucault‟s analyses of power relations also offered this research ways to critique pastoral power. Because of Foucault‟s analyses, I became aware that „coloured‟ people‟s experience of poverty and invisibility could not be separated from my own experience of the power of privilege and visibility. The operation of unjust power relations in the „coloured‟ community therefore compelled me to use my education and privileges to work for the restitution of the voices and of relational and physical possibilities in the lives of „coloured‟ young people. What started out as a research project became a cross-cultural journey of reparation and of my own humanisation. I argue that the praxis of embodied solidarity with the „other‟ is the challenge that poverty ultimately poses to people of privilege and to the ways in which theology defines itself. In doing the work of reparation I was supported by the relational theme of solidarity with the marginalised provided by a feminist theology of praxis. The knowledges of the women in the community in particular served as resources of faith. The research methodologies I used in this research combined the practices of narrative therapy, creative writing, mentoring and drama. The purpose of these methodologies was to invite young people into various meaning-making processes which enabled them to become the agents of their own lives and of a culture of possibility. Derrida‟s work on deconstruction and the aporia provided this research with a framework for the theory of possibility. Through the methodologies of networking and advocacy, other people have joined us in going beyond the physical and relational limitations of poverty to create possibilities for the young people and their schools.