Six or seven years ago the Sigidi village group in the "Simbhademe" development program expressed the vision for a foot bridge across the Mzamba River. The idea went out into the Universe. Today Build Collective.net, an NGO for Architecture and Development founded by Elias Rubin and Marlene Wagner from Austria handed over not a rickety rope bridge, but a beautifully Swiss engineered state of the art structure built with local labour and managed by a steering committee. It has been a remarkable accomplishment. Can local destinies be decided locally?
Cicero would say on the evidence of what I saw today "res et ipsa loquitur" meaning "The fact speaks for itself, that no further comment is necessary".
Let this be a lesson to those who think development can be imposed from outside, and that big problems can be solved by big solutions. This is undoubtedly a testimony that only development that based on a human scale works.