loveLife Opinion

You don’t have to look far to find grannies caring for five, ten, fifteen children whose parents have died. Not surprising, given that one in six children younger than 18 years has lost at least one parent. The number of people dying each year in their mid- to late-twenties has trebled since 1998. Most of them were parents. About two million children have lost a mother or father and at least 500,000 more have lost both. By 2010, we’ll have more orphans in South Africa than the entire population of Botswana or Namibia.

Typically, we think of orphans as doe-eyed toddlers desperate for food, love and attention. In part, that’s right, but we often forget that they grow up. In fact most orphans in South Africa are adolescents on the threshold of a very uncertain adulthood. They too need to feel as loved as their younger brothers and sisters. If they don’t, they’re likely to end up breaking into your home.

Yet just when young people need our attention most, we fail them. The age threshold for the child care grant has increased annually, but the grant falls away when you turn sixteen. Contrary to departmental instructions, some schools still refuse to accept children who can’t afford school fees or uniforms. Others drop out to care for their younger siblings or simply can’t get to school. Gangsters have cottoned on to the fact that most sixteen year old girls don’t have HIV, and rape them. For these teenagers, the brink of adulthood is the loneliest place of all.

Standing in the breach are old women and a few old men. Grandmothers and great-grandmothers have assumed the role of both parents and state. It is they who are doing the most to prevent the emergence of a feral generation. Many look after children with no biological kinship to them. They take them into their own homes, feed and clothe them from their old-age pensions, and protect them from predatory men.

We tend to ignore the fact that they hold society together. The traditional respect accorded old people often stops at the door of public institutions. An old gogo (grandmother) from Gamalakhe in southern KwaZulu-Natal told me how, having asked about the status of child care grant applications for the six children she cares for, she was sent away from the welfare office and told to come back in six months’ time. None of the children are related to her, and this is the second time she’s been told to come back half a year later. In the meantime, the children will continue to eat just once a day. Standing before the grants clerk, in front of the thick glass window, this courageous woman to whom we owe a debt of gratitude is treated like a pauper reliant on society’s largesse.

Now imagine if that gogo were part of a determined group of grandmothers able to assert children’s rights and demand greater responsibility from civil society and state. It would be harder for a school principal to deny a poor child access to school when ten gogos pitched up, armed with the knowledge that no child may be refused education because of their inability to pay for fees or uniform. The grants clerk too, may find the case for urgent action more compelling if confronted by a group of informed gogos who know how long grant applications should reasonably take. Similarly, a neighbourhood watch of senior citizens might make it more difficult for the sexual predator to slink into the homes of orphaned children.

Many grandmothers don’t need persuading. In the words of a gogo from Ethembeni in the Eastern Cape: “My children have died. I will do anything to stop my grandchildren dying too”. What they need is to be connected to each other, and the assurance that ‘they still can’.

With the assistance of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, loveLife has just initiated a network of 500 goGogetters across South Africa who will support teenagers and their younger siblings to develop a sense of purpose and belonging, keep them at school, help access social grants, prevent sexual and physical abuse, and increase access to food. These goGogetters belong to churches, stokvels, and burial clubs – a massive network that could be mobilized to stem further disintegration of our society. In the face of a national calamity, no one should sit on the sidelines. However, we know from many devastating events in history that most people will. Yet it doesn’t take ‘most people’ to make a difference; it needs you.

If the thousand South Africans who die from AIDS every day died on the streets of Sandton or Rondebosch, we would rise up as one to tackle it. But people with AIDS tend to die quietly and invisibly in back rooms far removed from the glitz of shopping arcades and restaurants.

How to stop the numbness that has so insidiously infused us? An eighteen year old hijacker takes the life of a young mother without blinking. A businessman spends more on a single lunch than a child receives as a grant for the entire month. It’s this divide that drives HIV, as millions of South Africans peer into a world of wealth that they do not share, and the divide widens as the first generation of ‘AIDS-orphans’ reaches adulthood. Too often, the only place that rich meets poor is through a car window at a street intersection.

It will take more than tax distribution to change this reality. The two sides of South Africa need to connect, so that we all feel that we have worth and belong. Yet most of us don’t have the time or inclination for community work. The goGogetter programme allows individuals and groups to connect with one grandmother – and through her, to help twenty children. If just 1% of the Independent Newspapers’ readership committed their support, enabling goGogetters to recruit other gogos, four hundred thousand children could be reached. We need to act fast. If we don’t, imagine when those children have children.

David Harrison is the former CEO of loveLife

You still can!

How South African grandmothers take care for orphans and vulnerable children

By Norbert Herrmann and Tshireletso Phatlhanyane

Suzan is 78 years old. Her husband was the nephew of Albert Luthuli, the first South African ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. That was in 1956. It’s now 2010, and Suzan Luthuli looks after Orphans and Vulnerable Children and Teenagers. For this commitment and dedication, she was honoured by the President of South Africa in April this year, receiving the ‘Grand Counsellor of the Baobab’ (Silver) award.

Today I meet Suzan in the North West province. She takes part in the annual all-hands meeting together with her ‘colleagues’. goGogetters, as these ladies are called, are aged between 53 and 86 years. They cannot just wait around and watch children are suffering. “Any mother’s heart will bleed as soon as she sees hungry children; children who do not wear proper clothes; children who are left behind.”

Onkabetse Mokgadi is one of Suzan’s fellow goGogetters, as are Annah Dipholo, Miriam Sedimo, Sophia Tau, Xakwile Maxakane and Dikeledi Kasebidile. Each of these 50 goGos from the North West is looking after up to 90 children and teenagers – listening to them, taking their issues seriously, and supporting them. “Sometimes you just have to take them by their hands – that is what these youngsters are lacking,” Onkabetse says.

This countrywide network of the goGos is organised by loveLife – South Africa’s national HIV/Aids-prevention initiative for youth. “A goGo rarely gives their home for these children; this would be something they cannot afford. But, they do everything they can to enhance the living standards of these children and teenagers,” explains loveLife’s Tshireletso Phatlhanyane, who manages the goGos in the North West province. A key issue the goGos take care of is the OVCs access to public services, particularly in terms of public grants. Even if the child has one parent, they may not know how to deal with bureaucracy. A goGogetter can help here as most of them used to be teachers, nurses or social workers.

Another key issue is getting the youngsters back into school. Schools are relatively safe places (the prevalence of HIV among school attendances is much lower than the prevalence in the group of young people who leave school early). However, many of these vulnerable children need to earn money or care for their siblings –unable to afford school uniforms, shoes, school material and groceries. Even if public grants are coming into a household, this money is seldom enough to feed a family or a number of siblings. This is where the goGos come in and take action. Through their network of acquaintances, businesspeople and other persons in the community, they seek out support.

Hands keep clapping during the North West meeting as the ladies tell their success stories: another family has received groceries for three months; another 20 school uniforms have been sponsored by the local business store; another 10 children have received their birth certificates, which are a prerequisite for getting public grants.

Yes, the goGos are old. They are old – and wise. They know how to deal with youngsters. “My goGos won’t be fooled by anybody. They have the experience to speak to parents, principals, social workers,” says Phatlhanyane. In some cases, the goGos even have to work together with the police when they need to report abuse. It can sometimes take time before anything is done, and can place the goGo in a dangerous situation when the abuser tries to deal with the goGo directly – and yet they stand firm.

It makes sense that loveLife supports these single fighters and provides them with a small grant. Phatlhanyane explains: “GoGos give help to OVCs, they open a door for them to lead a self-determined life. It is for this reason that loveLife supports these goGos… Only strong teenagers manage to face dangers and risks, such as HIV and Aids.”

Three advisors from the German Development Service (DED) – in the fields of monitoring, counselling and knowledge management – work with loveLife to keep this huge organisation on track. Every year, loveLife trains 1 300 young people called groundBREAKERS in HIV education and health. Management and several additional skills are incorporated into this training. Together with five selected volunteers (Mpintshis), these groundBREAKERS implement educational programmes in their region, schools, clinics, community centres and youth centres. There are currently more than 6 000 sites nationwide that are associated with loveLife. The organisation also reaches the youth through sporting events, as well as local and national radio programmes, and public service announcements on TV. In addition, it has a bi-monthly youth magazine UNCUT, a website, Facebook page and very own social mobile platform called mymsta.mobi. And through loveLife’s call centre, more than 100 000 callers get counselling and information when they call a toll-free help line. Then, of course, there are loveLife’s goGogetters.

Our meeting with the North West goGos at an idyllic resort in the Magaliesberg is not for recreation, but for training! They are being schooled in communication skills and to role play community meetings and family sessions. They get tips on how to better establish social networks, as well as the skills needed to complete monitoring forms so that they can document their work. The goGos make special requests of their own, such as the knowledge on how to become self employed. We present a structure on how a business idea might work, which is followed by numerous detailed questions by the goGos. As they prefer to speak seTswana, the loveLife Area Coordinator Mantsho Batlhapimg translates. Some of the ladies think of having a soup kitchen or to build orphans homes. They write down every piece of information they can get a hold of.

Morning, lunchtime, evening: whenever there is a few minutes break, the goGos start singing and dancing and praying. Every lady will read her favourite verse from the Bible, sing her favourite song – sometimes it is the loveLife goGo song stating: “You still can!” And they share their experiences and concerns. Suzan beings talking in perfect English: “No doubt it has been an enormous honour for me to go to Pretoria and to receive the Order. And I love to come here to you my sisters.” For Suzan, this meeting with the other goGos is more than just a meeting; it is exchange of experiences and source of power that helps her to stand up to forthcoming challenges. She tells us about a seven-year-old girl who she has to leave behind every time she goes travelling. The girl now stays with her father, who has been abusing her for years. Suzan’s tone becomes serious and strong. But then the tears start running, from her and her listeners’ eyes.

Norbert Herrmann is the Knowledge Management Advisor from the DED

Tshireletso Phatlhanyane manages the network of goGos in the North West province