The long-term goal is to advance human rights in poor and disadvantaged communities by significantly reducing violence in South African society in general – and against women and children in particular. This task is huge because South Africa has the highest rate of violence against women for any country not at war.

Abuse of women and children is a common feature of life in many South African households, and it crosses class and color lines. Different statistics about the high rate of rape in South Africa are bandied about by politicians and all sorts of experts. But whether the correct statistic is a rape every 60 seconds, 6 minutes, or 60 minutes, it remains a blight on South African society.

Armed with a clear picture of the size and nature of the problem, Maisel and his team worked with the "good" men who had been identified at the grassroots level. They promoted the idea that these men have a responsibility to act against, and prevent, violence in their communities. They sought to enhance their good qualities and values, and to find ways to help them support women.

Women were only involved only to identify the "good" men in their homes and communities. "5 in 6" held workshops for men in corporations, farms, the civic sector and government under the name "Everyday Heroes" project.

These workshops helped men understand the power relations between the genders, build self-esteem, and find positive ways to deal with difficult domestic situations. "5 in 6" later revisited some of these men in their home communities.

Maisel decided to work with adult men because he believed younger men needed them to be positive role models. The absence of his own father in his life influenced this approach.

Many of the men in the program showed evidence of seeing domestic violence in a new light, Maisel said. They wrote letters to "5 in 6," admitting that there had been a dramatic change in their level of consciousness about domestic violence, and that the workshops had equipped them to engage other men on the issue.

Nevertheless, as the number of men enrolled in the Everyday Heroes project grew slowly, it was obvious that targeting only men had its limitations, Maisel said. The rest of the community, particularly women and young people, needed to be drawn into the program to increase its effectiveness.

A Passage to India

Then came Maisel's trip to India. "In 1998, I went to India and spent a lot of time watching the Mahila Milan (Women Togetherness) and Slumdwellers International (SDI) organizations at work," he said. "In essence, they were using savings as a glue to build a social movement, while accumulating monetary resources. They use the collective power of human and financial resources to lobby for land, houses and other social needs."

Maisel was fascinated by the idea of people saving money every day. "What I saw in the community of savers was that there was no crime, no domestic violence, no druglords – and those people are poorer than our poor," he said.

Several months later, Maisel sat with his colleagues in his office in the Green Point neighborhood of Cape Town and hatched a plan for a savings program. As time passed, it became a central part of the work of "5 in 6," incorporating both men and women in a social movement that fights domestic abuse, using savings as the glue that holds it all together.

Maisel talks to some savers at the "5 in 6"
office in Green Point, Cape Town

In theory, the process is simple. Collectors in streets or housing blocks, who are appointed by the community, collect savings from willing participants every day – Mondays to Sundays, Christmas Day and national holidays – without exception.

A group of collectors for an area meets weekly to count the money and record it in a ledger. The collectors bank the money each week in a central account.

The money then goes into a pool. After one year, people can start taking loans to cover important expenses.

"If a saver needs a loan, the saver goes to the collector and asks," Maisel said. "The loan is always granted if savers have saved daily for at least one year. The savers save seven days a week, 365 days a year. This money is theirs. It is not dues."

Learning to Save for the Future

The project does most of its work in Cape Town in the Western Cape, one of South Africa's nine provinces. The Western Cape has a population of more than four million, 75 percent of which live in Cape Town.

Maisel with a group of savers and collectors
in Elsies River, Cape Town

"5 in 6" operates mostly in the colored areas of Cape Town, although it also works in outlying areas like Manenberg, the sprawling black township of Khayelitsha ("Our Home"), where some 700,000 live on arid, flat plains extending west from Cape Town, communities on the Cape West Coast, and Clarke's Estate.

Clarke's Estate is a poor, gang-infested housing project some 13 miles east of Cape Town's city center. Like much of Cape Town, it is home to a working class, colored population.

"I collect money each and every day of the year," says George Bruce, with obvious pride. He has been a saver and collector in Clarke's Estate since February. Five families in his block of flats are part of the savings program, and most of the members are women.

"In our work, we show people why it is important to save for the future, (so they will have money) when they will need school uniforms for their children or other things of importance," he said. "They need to think about these things in advance.

"Some people are really into it. They're now buying loose cigarettes instead of packets, and saving some of the money they have leftover." The savings program is still young, Bruce said, but over time it will be a great help its members.

Creating a Culture of Savings and Inter-Connectedness

Women's utter dependence on a man for financial sustenance is one of the main factors that traps them in abusive relationships, Maisel said. The fear of being alone or having no support is another critical element.

But through accumulated savings, women slowly begin to develop a sense of control, self-worth, and pride. The savings program inculcates a culture of daily saving, so that over time saving becomes a natural process, Maisel said.

Maisel at the "5 in 6" office with collectors from the Western Cape

Neighborhood residents get to know each other well through the savings program, and they begin to support each other. Maisel cited several examples: recently a collector intervened after a man beat his wife and burned her clothes. Discussions ensued, and the situation calmed. Before joining the savings program, the woman would have had nobody to turn to for help.

"5 in 6" fosters this interconnectedness, Maisel said. It reaches beyond a community through exchange programs in which residents of one community visit other communities in their province, or elsewhere in the country – or even in other countries.

Besides removing fear, collectively tackling problems will increase savers' ability to lobby for political change, Maisel said. This allows poor and disadvantaged people to exert greater control over their lives. They gain a voice when they are ready to begin lobbying. And as they take control of their lives, a growing sense of dignity begins to replace alienation.

Women can be more assertive as they become more financially independent. This in turn, creates a social connectedness that allows them to seek support from their neighbors when their rights are threatened. Already, Maisel notes, a group of savers in Elsies River has formed to lobby the municipal authorities for a reduction in their substantial rent arrears, and to work out a sustainable repayment schedule.

Combating Domestic Violence with Exchanges and Support

The conventional approach to domestic violence is failing in South Africa because institutionalized violence left deep scars during the more than four decades of apartheid rule, Maisel said. "The history of addressing domestic violence has been top down, legislative, and crisis-oriented, without involving the women they are supposed to be helping," he said.

Maisel adds that even the feminist movement in South Africa has not reached poor and disadvantaged women, because it consists of "mainly of middle and upper class" women. "The '5 in 6' project does not believe in shelters for abused women," he adds. "The idea of having a building where women go to be counseled entrenches the whole victim syndrome, and does not empower women."

A group of savers in a joyous mood with bags of collected money collected in Elsies River

But Maisel is quick to qualify this statement: "We are not against shelters, but we must seek other solutions as well. Shelters for battered women can be quite expensive, and in any case, there are only about three in every major South African city. There is a need for home-based care and community support."

The "5 in 6" system of exchanges and support is replacing a dependence on shelters, Maisel said. "For example, I have heard many instances where a saver from Namaqualand (about 250 miles north of Cape Town) is helped by a saver from Elsies River. We allow the members to take this initiative without our interference or prodding."

Developing the conditions for social interaction and support removes the fear that otherwise paralyzes women who must cope with abuse in isolation. But it is too early to assess the efficacy of this program, which will continue evolve, Maisel said.

Informality Lends Strength

Membership in the savings schemes is informal. All who save daily have equal rights and privileges, regardless of how much they save.

There are no membership fees. Maisel argues this informality strengthens the movement, adding, "even if they leave the scheme and still save, we regard them as members."

"We don't want people to pay membership fees because this puts a financial strain on them that they can ill afford," he said. "We call on the private sector and government to fund our running costs."

While "5 in 6" is systematically building a movement of savers to mobilize against domestic violence, it also supports a movement with a dynamic of its own, Maisel notes. The project's services are a continuing expansion of people-to-people exchanges, the savings program itself, and the provision of loans. And "as the scheme grows, the area of collective lobbying can be increasingly explored," Maisel notes.

Off to a Good Start

Savings project manager Laura van der Pohl credits the entire "5 in 6" team with passion, but she has especially high praise for Maisel. "Charles is our program manager," she said. "He keeps the big vision, and plays a big role in funding. He's very passionate about the saving schemes. He's very supportive and creative."

"The vision held by the staff of '5 in 6' is one of real communities, empowered to create their own peace, and to be responsible for themselves and each other," said Doug Reeler, a Cape Town consultant who works the Community Development Research Association, a local NGO. Reeler has many years of experience in organizational development. Last year, he completed an assessment of "5 in 6" after meeting with the "5 in 6" staff, interviewing savers, and observing collectors at work.

"Further in the future, they have a vision of a broader level social movement, the shape of which should be formed over time by the communities themselves, collectively," he said. "The vision is based on an assumption that community can be built through building relationships of social and economic interdependency, interlinked with the development of individual freedom, responsibility and personal discipline."

"5 in 6" has laid the basis for development of a strong social movement, Reeler adds. The savings scheme seems to be staying intact, requiring little intervention from "5 in 6," he said, adding that the project has worked to solve irregularities and bad practices as they occur.

Nonetheless, "It is too early to tell whether this has led to any permanent shifts," Reeler said. He paints a picture of a project that is off to a good start and has huge potential, but faces future pitfalls.

Reeler believes the challenges of growth are urgent and potentially threatening. "What strategies does '5 in 6' need to spread the model?" he asks. "How could '5 in 6' respond to the rising demand for the savings scheme in a way that ensures its coherency, quality and integrity? Some simple math calculations may reveal that in time '5 in 6' will be stretching its capacity to a breaking point, if it continues to operate in a similar way to the present."

Maisel with a group of savers and collectors
in Elsies River, Cape Town

Reeler warns that many savers seem extremely keen to remove their savings as soon as possible. "Is there not a scenario where there is a big run on the bank for loans at some stage – more than the amounts coming in? And that later, savers either cannot make loans, or can only make tiny loans because the pool has shrunk so much – leading to disillusionment and numerous withdrawals – or even a vicious circle of these?" he asks.

Like any project, "5 in 6" faces risks as it moves forward. The very notion of setting up a people-centered scheme in communities that have been battered by years of systematic oppression and deprivation is indeed a risky business.

Maisel and his team anticipate that scaling-up will require more resources, capacity and improved management. They are currently engaged in strategy sessions to begin planning for this scenario.

But they do not envisage an expanded staff. Rather, their focus will be on how to motivate collectors and savers to take more of a leading role, and to develop stronger administrative systems.

Maisel seems undaunted by the challenges ahead. He said he knows his work is cut out for him if membership continues to grow on its upward curve. Today's 4,000 members could conceivably expand exponentially to hundreds of thousands of members in coming years.

Maisel with a group of collectors

"Numerical growth is very important," Maisel said. As the number of savers grows, so does the amount of money for loans. At the same time, "more people speak to one another and address problems together," he said.

This increases the level of interconnection between neighborhoods, communities, and urban and rural areas – even across country borders, Maisel said. He cited several instances in which people telephoned, saying they had started saving as a result of contact with other groups of savers.

Meanwhile, Maisel, at age 34, must juggle his time between his work and his responsibilities as husband to his wife Jocelyn and father to a two-year-old son named Jake. He often accompanies collectors to the bank with bagfuls of coins, many of them 1 cent, 2 cent and 5 cent pieces.

While winging home across the Indian Ocean in 1998, ideas whirling in his head, Maisel could not have imagined transport collectors lugging huge bags of coins to a local bank. But today, he predicts he will soon need bigger bags and more helpers to collect these savings, which provide the glue for a burgeoning social movement against the abuse of women.

• Creating a Whole Community, by Kris Herbst
• Redefining Women: Three Generations Work Together in West Bengal, by Manisha Gupta
• From Relief Work to Sustainable Community Development, by Arundhati Ray
• Revitalizing South Africa's "Forgotten" Grassland, Photos and Sound by Janet Jarman
• Stopping Violence Against Women, by Arundhati Ray

  November 2001 Journal Home Page