Mandla Mentoor

Mandla Mentoor is encouraging environmental awareness and restoring pride and possibility to communities in South Africa by involving city residents–especially young people–in urban restoration projects.

By transforming abandoned open spaces and unofficial dumps into ecologically healthy and aesthetically pleasing places, Mandla is breathing life into South Africa's urban environmental awareness movement and restoring economic viability and community pride. In Soweto, scarred by decades of political oppression, poverty, and environmental neglect, Mandla has demonstrated what is possible to the township's disaffected, hopeless residents. Working with youth, he has restored what was formerly a bastion of untold horrors of the apartheid regime. The "new" public space–now called the Soweto Mountain of Hope–is a picturesque, luscious green area, free of litter and crime. The physical transformation has inspired an equally dramatic social transformation: the space now serves as a hub of community activities and hosts sports events, festivals, and markets. Mandla's first successful restoration is central to his plan to focus urban communities across South Africa on similar projects in their own cities. By linking cities in restoration efforts, he is building the infrastructure to support environmental awareness and education efforts throughout South Africa and neighboring countries.

The environment of South Africa's townships is severely degraded. Litter swirls in the air, embeds itself in upright structures, and covers ground surfaces. During apartheid, open space in most townships was used as urban waste dumps. Not only did this practice rob residents of potential recreational spaces, it also poisoned ground water as toxins and waste seeped deep into the soil. Industrial plants dumped waste into rivers and belched noxious fumes into the air with impunity. While the end of apartheid put a stop to many of these practices, public apathy and ignorance of environmental problems remain a major challenge.
Mandla believes that many South Africans cling to some sense of environmental consciousness that involves either maintaining a physically clean environment within one's own residential area or having an interest in wildlife. Most people do not make a connection between certain consumer practices and a deteriorating surrounding. Moreover, there is no awareness of how some industrial practices may negatively affect personal health. To compound all of this, there is a prevailing attitude that environmentalism is a luxury of the wealthy, that only those who have risen above the daily challenge of survival can afford to care about the environment.
In the rare cases where individuals might desire to address environmental degradation actively, two factors dissuade them from doing so. First, the reality of endemic, grinding poverty prevents people from pursuing activities that do not result in their getting paid. Second, poor knowledge about various environmental rights safeguarded by the constitution prevents many from seeking redress for illegal practices.

To restore environmental integrity in places where such concerns are secondary to conditions of extreme poverty, Mandla became convinced that it was essential to have a demonstrable symbol of success that would imbue all with a sense of hope and that would become a model for replication. Mandla therefore developed the concept of regenerating a long-neglected mountain in Soweto that had been designated as a park but never maintained by the City Council. For more than 25 years residents shunned the mountain since it had become a garbage-littered landscape known as a place for crime. Nevertheless, it had strong symbolic value: during the apartheid era, there were legends of secret resistance meetings organized by the African National Congress and held in hidden caves on the mountain. Moreover, from the summit significant historical landmarks are visible–landmarks like Freedom Charter Square that pays homage to the ANC's liberation manifesto and Avalon Cemetery where those killed during the infamous 1976 Soweto uprisings are buried.
Working extensively with young people in the area, Mandla has led the effort to completely transform this mountain. The garbage that littered the mountain has been cleared, and long, unruly grasses and shrubs have been trimmed back to create an aesthetically pleasing landscape. Vegetable and flower gardens have been planted at the foot of the hill. The transformation has been so successful that the City Council agreed to lease the land to Mandla and his organization. Local residents have also been inspired to make the mountain a center for community activities that draw diverse groups of people for cultural and sports events and for discussions about development. For instance, on December 31, 2001, there was a Youth Against Crime New Year's celebration that attracted an estimated 1,000 young people for a meal, candle lighting, fireworks display, and music.
The second component of Mandla's strategy is to provide economic incentives to encourage environmental responsibility. Mandla realized that within the poverty-ridden context of Soweto, where the majority of residents spend most of their time trying to meet basic needs of food and housing, "buy-in" was possible only if the initiative offered remuneration. He is therefore scaling up an initiative that uses discarded recyclable materials to create aesthetically pleasing, functional items for sale. These products include sculpture, jewelry, and tableware. Mandla has already proven the economic viability of this effort, and he plans to create a waste-buy-back center located at the Soweto site. Surrounding communities will be encouraged to sort their waste for recycling and subsequent sale at the center. Mandla also realized that it was essential to institute a process that would contribute to the broader goal of heightening environmental consciousness. Thus, he created a system he calls "enviroshares"–short for Environmental Information Sharing. This effort involves forming strategic partnerships with institutions and individuals to share knowledge in public forums, especially in workshops. In addition to bringing new knowledge into the community, the enviroshares system prevents Mandla from having to reinvent the wheel in problem-solving and, since the initiative does not require additional infrastructure, keeps operational costs at a minimum.
Through the process of enviroshares, township residents acquire new knowledge of their environmental rights–and thus the capacity for legal recourse–and information that enhances their conceptualization of environmental consciousness, a requisite for behavior changes. For example, a local university department is now providing the technical expertise in testing pollution levels in nearby wetlands, a wetlands reclamation project that emerged from what Mandla identifies as a growing environmental consciousness within Soweto and surrounding townships.
Mandla intends to replicate the success of the Soweto project throughout South Africa's townships. He envisions a process whereby interested parties learn from the Soweto project and return to their communities to transform other open spaces into community parks or food gardens. These open spaces would become the center for environmental awareness and transformation.

Mandla has always been dedicated to bringing social and environmental improvements to South Africa. His activities as a student during the apartheid struggle caused him to be denied a formal education. As a consequence, he had to seek knowledge actively on his own. During this period he noticed that a lot of young people had their future opportunities undermined by the apartheid government and were at risk of falling prey to desperate, destructive behaviors. This observation convinced him that the success of fundamental social change was exponentially enhanced if the target group and agents of change were young people. In this regard, he launched a project to educate young people about how to become successful entrepreneurs. Despite his efforts, he noted that most people who participated in his program did not realize their goals.
At about this time, Soweto had become a dumping area–a result of the city failing to collect waste. Mandla's exposure to companies like Mondi Recycling that were generating an income from waste and a desire to tackle excess waste in Soweto led him to create an initiative called Amandla Waste Creations. Amandla collected objects like cans and paper to create artifacts that were sold to the general public. As the business grew and delivery of materials to be converted into aesthetically pleasing commercial objects increased, Mandla realized that the possibility of toxic objects also falling into his hands had risen. And because he did not know how to handle such materials, he had to do further research. This–and the awareness that he was not the only one whose knowledge of environmental issues was inadequate–prompted him to scale up his activities and design more comprehensive solutions.