The Boksburg city council is trying to close the orphanage and education centre in Thabisile Msezane’s small house, reports Swapna Prabhakaran
Orphaned and runaway streetchildren in Boksburg have been given something more than just a handout. They have been given the option of a better life, thanks to the hard work of Thabisile Msezane.
Msezane started the Sithabile Day Care Centre in middle-class Dawn Park in Boksburg early in 1994. What began as just a warm place where abused and neglected children could come for a meal has blossomed into a home and school for 35 children.
Some of the children are orphans, and others are from poor families on the farms around Boksburg.
Msezane was a school teacher who left the profession because of ill health. Four years ago she was divorced and had two teenaged children to take care of. She says she was toying with the idea of starting an income- generating day-care centre.
But one day she noticed a small boy living in the corridors of a shopping centre in town. “He was not going to school. His parents could not afford to send him … I thought I’d better take him in. By the time I got back to my car, I noticed there was a whole group of these children. And so I started this centre.”
Since then, the centre has grown in small steps, relying heavily on donations and contributions from the community. Individuals visit the house to give her R50 or R100, and local supermarkets donate bread. “We don’t have a standing fund. The money sometimes comes from other people, but mostly it’s my own money,” Msezane says. She does part-time work to meet the running costs, sometimes teaching extra classes in Johannesburg.
Msezane initially used her own home to establish a secure world for these malnourished bodies and minds. Now, the modest three-bedroomed house has been taken over entirely by the project – every room houses eight or 10 children. In the back yard, two plastic buildings and a wooden shed serve as classrooms.
Msezane had to move her own family out of the house when it got too crowded – she rented the house next door. “Tokyo [Sexwale] used to rent this house once,” she grins.
The classroom was donated by the Canadian embassy, and in it Msezane gives literacy lessons to underprivileged women from the area on weekends. During the week, the 10- to 15-year-olds use it, while the smaller children, some as young as two, use the lounge as a makeshift play-school.
“If this facility did not exist, these children would not go to school. They would end up abused or as child labourers,” Msezane says. Sipho (not his real name) is 11 years old. He is one of four siblings, all born of different fathers. His mother lives on a farm and cannot support them. Until 1994 he was on the streets. “I was living badly,” he recalls. “I used to be sent by older boys from the farms to go to the shops and steal. Sometimes the adults would send me to steal cheese or chocolate.”
Sipho and the other children at the centre now sleep on bunk beds donated by the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Sipho says he is happy, and loves his teachers.
The centre depends on a staff of volunteer workers from the community, and two weeks ago the Department of Education installed a teacher from the nearby primary school, Freeway Park Primary, to teach full-time. The government’s primary-school feeding scheme also kicked in, and so some of the children’s meals are subsidised.
Msezane is grateful for the help from the education department, but says the welfare department has still not endorsed her work. She says the Boksburg city council has tried to close the centre down twice, once because it is in a residential area, and once because the centre “does not meet the necessary criteria”.
Gert Engelbrecht of the Boksburg city council says any application to open a new day-care centre would have to go through various official stages before it can be approved.
“The application will be circulated to the various departments of the council for comment, including the city engineers, the electricity department and the fire department. Once all the departments approve, a letter of approval is issued to the applicant, subject to certain conditions,” he said.
Msezane is impatient with such bureaucracy. “They have funds for projects like this, but I can’t access them,” she says. “They tell me I do not meet the criteria. A child is a child. What criteria?”
Despite opposition, Msezane says she will continue what she is doing, “until they come here themselves and take me away”. She says it’s worth it if some of the children can make something of themselves, by achieving their dreams, by becoming “a leader, or a soccer star”.
“I grew up an orphan myself. I could have ended up like these children,” she says. “Luckily, my teachers took care of me, and helped me finish school and my teacher’s training. I didn’t plan this … but I realised once I’d started maybe this is my way to pay back for the things that I got for free.”