Jack launches shack experience book
The DA's Jack (in a Shack) Bloom visited 30 shacks in 30 months and wrote a book about his experiences.
Can you imagine sleeping in a shack?
For many South Africans, and people of Mogale City, that is a daily reality.
Jack Bloom, the DA’s longest-serving member in the Gauteng Legislature, has gone and found out what it’s like to sleep in a shack – first hand.
Bloom visited more than 100 informal settlements around Gauteng, including a few from Krugersdorp. He spent a night in Soul City and Tudor Shaft informal settlements and even paid a visit to some of the needy in Appelpark, near Krugersdorp’s CBD.
After two-and-a-half-years of experiencing life in a shack, Bloom finally launched the book, in Krugersdorp last Thursday, about his findings called 30 Nights in a Shack – A Politician’s Journey.
His ventures throughout the province’s informal settlements became popularly known as Jack in a Shack, but its serious purpose was to highlight the plight of forgotten people and how they could be assisted to better their lives. At the book launch at Memorial Hall, Jack presented an a slide-show presentation of the book resulting in many questions asked about his experiences.
Bloom not only spent time in different informal settlements, but also continues to run campaigns for solar lights, adequate toilets and a replacement for dangerous paraffin stoves that cause shack fires.
Whether he was uncomfortable living in such conditions Bloom simply explained that in order to fully understand another human being, you have to place yourself in their shoes. He told the News that he was always welcome at these settlements.
“The world will be a better place if we all got to know each other.”
The book, along with the 80 photographs of his experience, is available in bookstores for R185 and R125 for the e-book version.
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