THIS IS STILL A DRAFT AND I AM CURRENTLY STILL FORMULATING MY THOUGHTS, SO PLEASE BE UNDERSTANDING

I am (around the 8th May initially) writing this in a much more clear headspace. The sun is warm, I can openly dress how I want and for the first time in months I get to experience community at a skatepark. This experience and headspace will be shortlived as I will inevitably have to return to my transphobic family and toxic home environment. However, some lingering thoughts on my relationship to mutual aid and community work have begun to solidify and with this video by Andrewism helping me pin the gaps I was missing. I realise I may not have to return to isolation once more.

I first learnt of mutual aid in my time participating in community work in Capetown and becoming a budding organiser in my immediate environment. My very first week in this city a distraught man approached me as we left class to grab lunch. He asked me for some spare change to get food. Reaching into my pockets to grab a R10 note left from the morning coffee, I attempted to start a small conversation with him. This conversation was cut short by a white classmate yanking me by my backpack and echoing me words likely instilled in him at a young age, “Don’t talk to the Bergies, (a word I would later learn was a derogatory Afrikaans term for homeless persons) that’s how you get robbed.” This interaction rubbed be wrong on so many levels. This person posed no threat to me at all and was simply asking for aid for something that is core to a person’s survival and yet they were cast as subhuman and to be ignored.

Almost out of sheer spite for that whiteboi, I made a mental note to always do the exact opposite. When asked for help and my safety was not compromised, I aimed to help to whatever capacity I could, even if it simply meant listening to their stories.

And listen I did.

I remember this old man trying to grab a seat outside the corner store I frequented being shooed by the store owners. After a short back and forth with them, I convinced them to let him sit on a crate for a bit and bought him a drink and some bread. Strange how capitalism has us bargaining for a simple seat. He then told me his story. He was just released from holding after being found with a few grams of weed, a means for him to feed his grandkids abandoned by their parent. A sweet old man, made an example of by a system built on anti-blackness and wielding the remnants of the apartheid state apparatus.

I listened to many more stories and I hope to one day write about them, but my process of radicalism is intrinsic to these tales and lives of strangers who felt comfort through a simple kindness shared towards them.

By my final years in Cape Town I was volunteering my time where it was needed, I asked friends to help gather clothes for clothes drives, and I found NCC.

Safe to say, Cape Town and it's horrible inequality and nonsensical capitalist contradictions radicalised me. That same city would remind me I was not immune to being black and trans, disguarding me too once my use was complete. I lost my job and with university complete and no visa options available, had to return to Zimbabwe.

Note to self. You need to Read some Mutual aid theory before fully publish this post so that you can better understand the topics and explain the thought process a little bit better. Just because you aren't suffering it does not mean you have to deny yourself the chance to live.

I now realise that the most important type of mutual aid i can do is got get more people to join the cult of (girl you're too unserious lmao) skateboarding. It builds everlasting friendships and is inherently a revolutionary culture in a country that still ignores the voices of the youth.

I wish to one day open an anarchist skate shop. Take what you need, leave what you can (shoes, decks, wheels, clothes). It’ll have a little library, some tables for people to art and craft on, share meals, and find community as they please. This is my dream. Feed hungry people and skaters as we try build the world we want, one obstacle at a time.

Keep in mind, this is all purely selfish. I want to see more skaters out here and that is all.

As for me, i will eventually get out safely, how idk. But i would like to now frame anything meant to specifically help me as simply Direct Aid. Show previous examples of my MA posts that could be DA

Sooo i was going to say that I don’t need anymore aid, but on returning to my home and being insulted by my sperm doner’s transphobic misogynistic and outwardly violent rhetoric i remember that my safety is indeed at risk. I still do need help getting out of this environment, but I want to frame things that specifically help me as Direct Aid while my community centered work will be Mutual Aid. In practice online I will likely still use #MutualAid for the collective algorithmn to find but with specific clarity in my wording as to when it is Directly Aiding me.

Going forward I want directly feed more into my community, while trying to not forget my own needs as I often tend to do. Build tools, make friends, share resources. If I could do it in Cape Town I can do it here. For a start that means getting more people in my local community on some boards, get us outside and away from the gloom this country often brings and continue trying to build more D.I.Y stuff until we finally get the city, or even better the PEOPLE, to care more about public third spaces.