On Monday, 9 June 2025, SA Harvest joined the opening session of the WAKE UP with Daily Maverick series at the Hermanus FynArts Festival, where COO Ozzy Nel was featured in a powerful conversation with award-winning journalist Estelle Ellis. The session, titled “The Impact of Ordinary People”, explored how individuals and communities are confronting South Africa’s most pressing challenges by showing up, acting consistently, and reclaiming their agency.
The discussion, moderated by SA Harvest’s Head of Strategy, focused on the theme of grassroots resilience and the transformational potential of everyday action. It wasn’t about titles or high-profile interventions. It was a conversation grounded in the stories of neighbours, drivers, journalists, and coordinators: people who chose to respond when something needed to be done.
Ozzy Nel shared a deeply personal story about arriving late to a food distribution event, where he brought only 200 buckets of essentials for a crowd of over 2,000 people. Rather than withdrawing, he found a translator, apologised to the community, and promised to return. This act of honest humility turned a logistical shortfall into a moment of trust-building and dignity.
Estelle Ellis, known for her fearless reporting and deep-rooted community presence, spoke about moments where bearing witness, simply being there, listening, and acknowledging pain, became a powerful form of journalism and solidarity. Her reflection on being told to “just stand here” after an ambulance was attacked served as a reminder that presence, even without answers, matters.
The session centred around a critical question:
Can ordinary people still make a difference?
The answer was a resounding yes, but with an important caveat: action must be sustained, rooted in empathy, and shared across communities. Consistency matters more than spectacle. Compassion matters more than control. And change becomes sustainable only when agency is distributed, not hoarded.
A key takeaway was the need to move beyond heroic narratives and instead focus on empowering communities to take ownership of solutions. SA Harvest’s approach (working with community-based organisations and amplifying their capacity) reflects this belief. The people we support are not just recipients of aid; they are partners in transformation.
The session also highlighted the importance of reframing what power looks like. Not as dominance or visibility, but as proximity, presence, repair, and co-creation. Real impact isn’t measured in accolades. It’s felt in relationships, in return visits, and in the dignity of shared responsibility.
The WAKE UP with Daily Maverick series at FynArts offered a platform for dialogue, reflection, and recommitment. It reminded all who attended that the most urgent work of our time is not to scale power, but to distribute agency.
As Ozzy and Estelle so powerfully demonstrated, the starting point for that work is simple:
Show up. And keep showing up.