History

Helping Hand’s history by Dr Wessel Visser, University of Stellenbosch

“In times of misfortune you require more than just material things: you seek friendship and sympathy. You want your fellow man to take an interest in your wellbeing; you look for proof that your fellow man wants you to get back on your feet because he still needs your friendship. Helping Hand gives destitute people both physical and mental strength and encouragement. Helping Hand is your best asset, because it is self-ennobling.”

The above quote offers a poignant description of the ethos and empathy of Helping Hand, an organisation which came into existence to help alleviate the plight of Afrikaner mine workers. Helping Hand was established in 1949, the year after Daan Ellis became the general secretary of the Mine Workers’ Union (MWU). In those days the union did not have a statutory pension fund and the Mining Phthisis Act was woefully inadequate. The union’s new management consequently established a special welfare committee and welfare division. The new division used the image of helping hands as its emblem and soon became known as the MWU’s Helping Hand. Servaas de Wet (who became a senator for the National Party in 1955) was appointed as the MWU’s first welfare officer. According to De Wet, the MWU was the country’s only trade union with a welfare division at the time. His motto for Helping Hand was: “Everyone of us goes through this life but once. Therefore, if I can confer a benefit upon a less privileged co-worker, I will do so now!”

Helping Hand’s goal was to assist people in dire need who had no other recourse. In order to raise funds for welfare projects, the MWU management initially invested £10 000 with the welfare division at five per cent interest, amounting to an annual fixed income of £500 for Helping Hand. The first welfare projects that resulted from this investment included the purchase of a wheelchair and a sewing machine for two mine workers who had been injured in mining accidents. A beach fund was also created with a view to acquiring a holiday resort by the sea where the children of MWU members could spend their vacations.

In August 1949 the welfare project took an interesting entrepreneurial turn when Helping Hand sponsored the widow of a phthisis sufferer to do a course in doll making, enabling her to supplement her income by making dolls. The widow’s home industry eventually grew into the Transvaal Doll and Ornament Company in Alberton. The MWU management appropriated £1 000 to expand the doll factory. The factory, which made a large variety of dolls, later relocated to Boksburg. At its pinnacle the Transvaal Doll and Ornament Company employed 14 women (widows or dependants of unfit mine workers) and three men (mining phthisis sufferers). The factory’s products were sought-after and were even put on display at the Boksburg Exhibition.

Helping Hand committees were set up in various mining districts like the East Rand, the Central Rand and the Free State to satisfy the great demand for social aid. In Boksburg the Helping Hand branch raised funds from as early as 1952 for Christmas baskets filled with essential items for families in need. As part of another interesting fundraising initiative for Helping Hand, Braganza tea and Senator coffee, well-known brands at the time, were sold at mobile cafeterias. These tea and coffee brands were the initiative of the prominent Afrikaner philanthropist and entrepreneur, Dr Anton Rupert, who established the Eerste Nationale Tee- en Koffiefabrieke Beperk as an empowerment project for Afrikaner women.

By the 1990s Helping Hand still pursued its initial objectives. According to MWU-Nuus, contributions to Helping Hand were essential for the following reasons: Job opportunities for white workers had become scarcer as a result of affirmative action and even highly qualified and experienced workers became unemployed. Some families lacked the basics like food and clothes and were unable to send their children to school.

The MWU could not escape the melting pot of sweeping changes in the country’s political, social and economic landscape at the end of the twentieth century. The radically altered socioeconomic and political realities that came into being after 1994 compelled the trade union to rethink and redesign its vision, strategies and structures entirely. Since 1997 the MWU has undergone a systematic and fundamental transformation from an ordinary industrial trade union to a modern, future-oriented labour services organisation. In 2001 the trade union was known as MWU Solidarity. In 2002 the name was changed to Solidarity, signalling that the organisation was open to workers from all industries and professions who supported its objectives.

In order to live up to its declared objective of service delivery to its members, the trade union re-launched Helping Hand in 2001 as Solidarity Helping Hand which would function independently from the trade union as a separate entity. Since its re-launching, Helping Hand has upheld the noble objectives of its founders and has initiated various innovative projects.

In 2005 Solidarity Helping Hand was registered as a Section 21 company at the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office and as a non-profit organisation at the Department of Social Development and went from strength to strength. In the same year, Helping Hand lived up to its name once again. When 6 513 workers were left jobless following the liquidation of the DRD Gold Mine in Stilfontein, Solidarity joined forces with the Stilfontein community in raising more than R3 million and food supplies worth almost R1 million. Funds were also channelled from Helping Hand. As a result of these efforts, an emergency feeding scheme, which included school feeding projects, for some 3 000 families and individuals, irrespective of race, was maintained for five months.

By 2006 Solidarity Helping Hand concentrated on feeding projects (38 feeding projects worth R200 000 at schools), clothing projects and housing projects (especially emergency relief in squatter camps and shelters predominantly inhabited by Afrikaans people); study aid for children of Solidarity members; emergency relief for indigent pensioners; support for children’s homes, old-age homes, homes for the disabled and other service organisations; and community development and empowerment. Helping Hand opened a depot to accommodate the vast amount of donated goods it received. Various well-known celebrities also became involved in the organisation’s fundraising efforts.

In 2007 Helping Hand’s child projects became a core aspect of its activities. The projects were aimed at preparing children for successful entry into the labour force as adults. These projects were rooted in the premise that if young people made the right career choices, the cycle of poverty could be broken. The projects dealt with issues like child abduction, the protection of street children, the upgrading of interview rooms for children at police stations and the rehabilitation of prostitutes and drug addicts. In addition to this, Helping Hand paid out R1 million in bursaries to more than 100 students for the first time. Forty per cent of these funds was used for academic studies and the rest was used for vocational training. In response to the growing demand for study aid in South Africa, the Solidarity Helping Hand Bursary Fund was expanded to cater for all prospective students in the country. Furthermore, a home nursing course was developed in conjunction with community role-players for people who have a passion to work with the elderly. The course also enabled the students concerned to create a better future for themselves. Another praiseworthy initiative of Helping Hand was the Schoolbag Project which was launched in 2007 and expanded in 2008. The Schoolbag Project provides disadvantaged children (mainly Grade 1 learners) in the Western Cape and Gauteng with schoolbags and stationery.

In 2008, 59 years after Helping Hand’s humble beginnings, Dr Danie Langer was appointed as the fund’s first full-time executive director. Under his leadership, Solidarity Helping Hand quickly expanded into an organisation with 21 members of personnel and a regional office in the Western Cape. Helping Hand underwent radical restructuring and strategies were implemented to ensure the organisation’s sustainability in the twenty-first century. A broad national and international network was established. The organisation can pride itself on its extensive and noteworthy welfare projects and its ability to stay true to its original calling.