I AM a huge fan of musician Simphiwe Dana. She sizzles when she is on stage and can set the entire auditorium on fire.

When her voice bellows from the very depths of her, it is as if she has gone into herself and discovered a hidden crevice in her soul. And from this space she draws her deepest passions, her hopes, her fears, her joys, and then ever so generously shares it with her audience.

Dana is also passionate about the preservation of African languages and culture. Her dictum is that without its indigenous language, a community will not know its past and has very little to survive the journey into the future.

The multi-award winner has spent the last couple of weeks traversing corners of this country as part of her Black Culture Education Tour.

The tour was meant to share her music and entertain but most importantly to promote reading through a book drive.

The response has been poor and Dana had to dig deep into her own pockets to keep it going. Excellent, I say. This is what she should have done in the first place.

I think she erred in expecting others to buy into her vision. The way to go about it is to use your own resources and if anyone wants to join you, then it is a bonus.

Keep working and sacrificing and once the fruits of your labour are visible, others might join in. Her cry that "people have no concern but for their own lives" is fallacious.

She says people are "desensitised". Sponsorship makes life easier and if people promised her things and did not deliver then that is wrong. But she must not conclude that she did not get support because others are "desensitised".

The concept is brilliant and worthy of praise and that is why I gave her the platform to tell my listeners about it.

But the call for sponsorship and donations is the last step in our quest to make the world a better place. We must start with the little we have. The people whose support she didn't get, those she alleges "have no concern." may also have their own projects.

Through my work I have been exposed to the work that people are quietly doing to make a difference.

Obviously this is not enough because the needs are overwhelming but I can say with authority that South Africans are doing amazing things, sacrificing a lot. While they hope for and welcome donations, they have no expectations and are using whatever they have without being disappointed that others have not come to the party.

Every day I'm inundated with information of community projects, athletes who are pushing their bodies to raise funds, ordinary citizens who are sponsoring a stranger's education, unemployed families who are adopting their relatives and sharing the little they have, "madams" who are putting their domestic workers' children through school, business people who are uplifting their previous schools and communities.

A well known cosmetics company has an award for the most magnificent woman. That woman is not well known but is found in the far flung corners of South Africa.

One woman I met is a retired principal, who uses her two-roomed house in rural Eastern Cape to teach orphaned children in the area.

In Soshanguve, there was a domestic worker who had planted a vegetable garden for hungry people in the community and the story that brought me to my knees was an old granny for whom a car was donated so she could ferry mentally challenged children to school. Their parents had abandoned them and this granny took them in.

The list of acts of kindness is long, we just don't read about it. Dana may not have secured the sponsorship she hoped for, but there may be a myriad of reasons for that. To assume negative intent on others is unfair.

They haven't failed her. They may be busy making a difference elsewhere. Dana must definitely carry on with her work, sponsorship or not.