This book describes how those individuals who are often most marginalised in postcolonial
societies draw on age-old non-western knowledge systems to adapt to the hardships
characteristic of unequal societies in transformation. It highlights robust indigenous pathways
and resilience responses used by elders and young people in urban and rural settings in
challenging Southern African settings (South Africa Namibia Lesotho and Swaziland) to explain
an Indigenous Psychology theory. Flocking (rather than fighting fleeing freezing or fainting)
is explained as a default collectivist collaborative and pragmatic social innovation to
provide communal care and support when resources are constrained and needs are par for the
course. Flocking is used to address amongst others climate change (drought and energy use in
particular) lack of household income and securing livelihoods food and nutrition chronic
disease (specifically HIV AIDS and tuberculosis) barriers to access services (education
healthcare social welfare support) as well as leisure and wellbeing. The book further
deliberates whether the continued use of such an entrenched socio-cultural response mollifies
citizens and decision-makers into accepting inequality or whether it could also be used to
spark citizen agency and disrupt longstanding structural disparities.
