• Donation Option 1 – ZAR / R ( SA) PayFast

• Donation Option 2 – GBP / £ ( UK) PayPal

We are 12 artists from the bushman heritage museum who normally make art, that show the rich creation mythology of the |Xam people.

We would like to thank our director, Jeni Couzyn, and her friends and neighbours in the UK, and also our friends in South Africa for donating more than R 20 , 0000 towards our community soup kitchen

We’ve been told by the Municipality that we won’t be able to serve cooked meals due to the rule of the lockdown. Through the soup Kitchen, we served food from our Outreach House, to hundreds of people. It would have been really sad to our community to just stop it. We’ve made masked from old t-shirts and went door to door to people’s houses to measure their income and need for food parcels. We’ve recorded 252 households. As we looked through the census we found it very difficult to choose who to give the food parcels to. As at seems that all of the Household needs some assistance with food, electricity and PPE.

Together with our director Jeni Couzyn, we decided to use the money that were raised for the soup kitchen, to buy raw food like vegetables, pulses and basics. With the money donated from the last campaign we have been able to get raw food and packaging distribution in line with South African Corona (covid 19) distribution requirements and PPE. We’ve managed to give food parcels to 140 of the neediest households.

Everyone were very grateful and said the Arts Centre did a very good thing, because we think about the whole community and they felt that our food parcels were nicely balanced. It was just here and there a house that we missed, but they were either okay or they already got a food parcel from another source. We almost cover the whole of Bethesda.

Our Organisation will appreciate any assistance towards more food parcels and PPE for our Community. Visit our website www.bushmanheritagemuseum.org and our social media pages if you would like to donate

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One of our first patrons, Denis gave me £1000 for the Centre I was setting up in the very early years twenty years ago, and I used it to buy our first furniture – chairs and tables for the art classes my daughter Tarot and I were running at the falling down building we were making into the Bethesda Arts Centre. 

Denis was a loyal friend, visiting the Centre three or four times over the years, hosting our group for memorable lunches at his home in Hout Bay, and arranging an exhibition of our work at the Hout Bay Gallery, where he bought an early tapestry of ours about the creation of the stars. 

Denis was an inspiration to our group at the Centre. For our group, a white man who had gone to prison for twenty-two years to fight for the freedom of black and brown people was astonishing, and made even more astonishing because of the way he welcomed us all into his home, not caring that we were mostly brown.  

The group thought of Denis as “Jeni’s friend who is also our friend.” He was much loved, and will be held in our hearts.

Jeni Couzyn

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• Donation Option 1 – ZAR / R ( SA) PayFast

• Donation Option 2 – GBP / £ ( UK) PayPal

In Nieu Bethesda, the Bushman Heritage Museum is closed for the lock-down because of the Corona virus (Covid 19). But the Bushman artists of the museum are responding to the acute suffering around us. We are twelve full-time participants in an orgainsation who normally make art, like textiles, lino prints, drawing and stained glass. Our museum is filled with giant tapestries we’ve made, that depict the rich creation mythology of the |Xam people.

We had plans for a soup kitchen in our community, before the Lock down. We live in a rural area suffering from poverty. We served food from our Outreach House, to hundreds of people who queued up on the dusty road with whatever containers they could bring. Our community were very pleased and grateful to the Centre that provided food.

Without any income, from the third week of the Lockdown due to the Corona virus, life became even more difficult for our community. The main struggle they are facing is to feed their families. For the next few weeks, we will be delivering hot meals to families door to door, to comply with the lockdown regulations, and to try to keep people safe. We will cook rooster brood and samp as basic carbohydrates, with pulses and vegetables grown on our plot.

With the support of neighbours and friends of our director Jeni in London we have funds for two weeks of food. We need money urgently to buy PPE for the community, and for the project in the longer term.

Our organisation is heavily dependent on the income we used to generate through running tourist accommodation and a tourist restaurant, and through entrance fees to the museum. This income has dried up overnight, because of the corona pandemic, leaving our organisation with a severely restricted income source. Visit our website www.bushmanheritagemuseum.org and our social media pages if you would like to donate.

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