Paul Kirk, Nalisha Kalideen, Fiona Macleod, Marianne Merten and Connie Selebogo spoke to the parents of five children born this year
‘I want her to have all the choices she wants,” says 24-year-old Waleed Ajouhaar, a young father from gang- ridden Manenberg on the Cape Flats.
His daughter, Aiesha, was born on November 19 and will be 43 days old when the new millennium dawns.
Little Aiesha gurgles in the arms of her mother, Celeste Jansen, cries and is fed, only to fall asleep again. The newly-born is unaware of the children playing barefoot on the street and the young men gathering in the shadowy corners of the nearby blocks of flats so typical of the Cape Flats.
Jansen (18) fell pregnant after finishing matric last year. Unlike many young couples, Jansen and Ajouhaar stayed together to raise their child – one commitment Ajouhaar has made is to be there for his daughter, no matter what.
While Ajouhaar goes to work in town, Jansen has put her dream of becoming a nurse on hold to look after their baby.
Both parents are worried about raising their child in one of the most impoverished areas on the Cape Flats, where unemployment is high and gangs largely control everyday lives.
“I just want to get out of Manenberg before she can walk and talk. I don’t want her to see the things going on around here,” Jansen says.
Ajouhaar agrees. They have already decided that Aiesha will not attend creche or school in Manenberg. Last month, a 12-year-old boy was stabbed to death at one of the primary schools, and a local high school has erected an electrified fence around its property to keep out gangsters and vandals.
The paperwork on various investment policies to be transferred into his daughter’s name is being processed. “I want her to be able to go on studying if she wants,” says Ajouhaar.
Aiesha stays with Jansen in a small white house with red trimmings and a grassy courtyard. She is the youngest of four generations under one roof. Her father lives just around the corner.
The couple plan to move in together. Although Jansen is Christian and Ajouhaar is Muslim, the different religious beliefs have not been an issue. However, it remains to be seen how Aiesha will react to the middle name her father gave her – Anfield, after the home ground of his favourite football club, Liverpool.
For Lucky Xhosa, who works in the tobacco fields near White River in Mpumalanga, the new millennium holds lots of promise. That’s why he and his wife, Elizabeth Xhosa (30), named their baby daughter Promise.
Xhosa says he would like his 10-month- old daughter to grow up to be a doctor, or at least “somebody clever”. But given that he earns R15 a day, working six days a week as the “boss boy” on the farm, and that the couple have four other children, it’s difficult to see how they’ll find the money to give her the right kind of education.
Xhosa is upbeat about her prospects: “Look, before the 1994 elections people here were dying and suffering.
“Since the new government, things have got a lot better. I don’t know what will happen after 2000, but I hope her future will be better than ours was when we were children.”
Xhosa only managed to finish standard five before his parents drafted him into farm labour. His eldest daughter, Nelsiwe (7), is already attending a small farm school sponsored by Sappi – and he plans to make sure all his children go as far as they can with their schooling.
“The children will be different after 2000,” he says. “Very soon, they will be surprised and laugh when they hear somebody saying they were born in the 1990s.”
The sprawling farm “compound” where the Xhosa family has been living for the past three years will be deserted over the New Year. The festive season is a time for Mpumalanga’s “migrant labourers” to head for the trust lands, rural black residential areas.
“We’re going home for a big party,” smiles one of the Xhosa’s neighbours, Lungile Nyundu (16). She has a one-year- old baby, Innocentia, but the father has disappeared and they have to live off her grandmother’s meagre wages.
“There’s no money to talk about Innocentia going to school or having much of a future after 2000,” she says.
Like most 16-year-olds, Nyundu isn’t planning much beyond the exciting celebrations on New Year’s Eve. “We’re going to braai some meat and have some drinks and then when midnight comes we’re going to beat the drums.”
Suntherin and Ranjeni Naicker of Phoenix have no idea what the future holds for their two-month-old daughter, Sharda, but, like all parents, they hope for the best.
The couple believe that since their ancestors arrived in South Africa Indian people have been treated like second-class citizens and little has changed with the coming of democracy.
Says Suntherin Naicker, a 31- year-old accountant: “Before 1994, Indian people were not white enough to count. Now, years after our elections, we are on the other side of the fence. We are now too light-skinned to matter. For years apartheid discriminated against us as we were too black, now we are not black enough to gain from affirmative action.”
The couple say that they will insist their daughter attends university as they believe the only way to succeed is through education.
Says Ranjeni Naicker: “It is not enough to be as good as an African candidate in a job interview. You have to be much, much better to even stand a chance. Most businesses do not want to hire Indians, they want Africans. For us to succeed we need to be so good that a firm cannot live with themselves if they do not hire us.”
And while the couple gripe about affirmative action, they also fear their daughter may be the victim of crime. They themselves have been robbed three times.
“Many Indian people have legitimate gripes about the country, especially the crime levels, but we do not have the option of emigrating. All we can do is stay here and do our best to make the country work,” says Suntherin Naicker.
But while he claims Indians are still often regarded as second-class citizens, he also admits that in many ways Indian people themselves can be blamed for the “suspicion” with which they are regarded.
“Because family is such an important part of the Indian community and because we are so close-knit, we are often regarded as a sort of mafia. And while I agree that sometimes we have been too insular and have neglected getting to know our neighbours, very few South Africans have bothered to get to know us.
“If I walk through town I still may find myself being called a charrou, a Grey Street larny and so on.”
Ranjeni Naicker believes that only once South Africans get to know each other will her daughter’s future look brighter.
“I know that sounds like bullshit, like a Simunye advert, but it is true. I am not saying you have to like everyone. I don’t like Louis Luyt and he is white, but I equally don’t like Saira Essa and she is Indian. All I am saying is, at least get to know people before you pass judgement on them. If we just got to know each other a lot of the petty jealousy and dislikes would disappear.”
Exactly what future little Sharda can look forward to, though, is still uncertain. “I can only guess at that,” says Suntherin Naicker, “and I am no good at guessing.
“And for her future she can look anywhere in the world. Not just the traditional charrou haunts of Blue Lagoon and Grey Street that apartheid consigned her ancestors to.”
‘Parenthood will be very challenging in the next century,” says Lesetja Kganyago, father of a newly-born baby boy. Mororisheng was born just 22 days before the new millennium but Kganyago already understands that one of the challenges facing him as a parent will be to create a balance – between a privileged life in the suburbs and the child’s cultural heritage.
The Kganyagos have come a long way from their humble upbringings. Lesetja Kganyago was raised in a rural area in Pietersburg where he would hunt hares, springboks and guinea fowl for food. He is now the chief director for liability management in the Department of Finance. Zibusiso Kganyago, a property development manager, was a candidate for this year’s Lebone Woman of the Year.
The Kganyagos are in a position to give their first child the best of everything. However, this does not necessarily mean a private school education. Mororisheng’s father says he will not be willing to send his son to a private school 30km away when he can send him to a public one in his own area.
Even though they have an affluent lifestyle in Centurion, near Pretoria, they have not forgotten their roots. Lesetja Kganyago was raised and disciplined by the community around him. “If I did something wrong when I was a boy,” he recalls, “and if an elder caught me, I would be disciplined even before the news of my wrongdoing reached my father.” But today he realises one cannot even consider disciplining someone else’s child.
Once Mororisheng is old enough, they will send him to his grand- father’s house in Pietersburg to learn a sense of community and experience the family structures involved with living in a rural area.
The family connection is obviously important to both parents. Lesetja Kganyago says they regret that their busy lifestyles and circumstances do not give them nearly enough time to spend with their families.
This does not mean that their cultural heritage will be ignored. Mororisheng’s mother is Zulu, his father Northern Sotho, and his parents insist that the child learn to speak both languages fluently. Lesetja Kganyago believes culture is dynamic; that it should adapt to the circumstances that surround it or it will not survive.
It is important to the Kganyagos that their son be exposed to the diversity of different cultures in this country, but it’s also equally important that he does not lose his cultural identity.
But in the end, Lesetja Kganyago says: “My son will succeed in any career he chooses because he will be given all the opportunities to do so. I do not want to be the sort of parent to dictate what his career choice should be.”
Heinrich van de Watt is barely two months old, and it already looks like he’ll inherit his mother’s striking red hair. But it’s still too early to tell which parent he looks like the most, let alone what his future will be.
Heinrich is the second (and last) child of Andre and Riana van de Watt, twenty- something, forward-thinking parents from Pretoria. Andre owns and manages his own restaurant and Riana is a physical education teacher.
Their roots lie within a close-knit Afrikaans-speaking family. Culture and religion played a significant part in their upbringing and will be central in Heinrich’s as well.
For Andre and Riana van de Watt it is essential that their family keep in touch with their heritage; however, they refuse to let Heinrich become culturally isolated.
Their daughter Jacqueline will be three years old next year and is already a sociable and confident child. Her mother attributes this to the interactive nursery school she attends and to the diversity of the backgrounds of the children who attend the school. She intends the same for Heinrich.
Both parents are convinced that the most noteworthy factor in deciding Heinrich’s future will be the quality of education he receives.
They believe that Heinrich, being a white Afrikaans male, is not at a disadvantage in a country going through a transitional phase. In the competitive job market of the future, race will not even be an issue for their son; instead education and self- assurance will be more vital. They are already making provisions to meet the inflating costs of education.