There is hardly any light in the house at 11am. Pieces of cardboard patch broken windows, there are plates and cups piled high in the sink and a thick layer of dust covers the floral pattern of the main bedroom’s duvet.
“We use [our parents’ bedroom] to keep stuff in … no one sleeps there anymore,” says Thando*, twin sister of Thabo*, who at 14 is an orphan and the head of her household in the dusty township of Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg.
There are about 18,4-million children who have lost parents to HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, including about a million in South Africa.
“When you see children living in child-headed households it’s dramatic. The stress is enormous. It’s a day-to-day fight for nutrition, and all the different stresses of life come together in this one house … it’s so important that people support children in this position,” says Marc Aguirre, director of Hope Worldwide, an NGO that supports child-headed households in and around Johannesburg.
The twins’ mother died in March 2006 of pneumonia and their father — who was a security guard — died five years ago. Neither their parents nor the community explained to them how or why their parents got so sick.
“I want to know. One day I’ll ask my uncle,” says Thando, who claims to look exactly like her father.
Counsellors typically don’t tell the children that their parents died of HIV/Aids to avoid them being stigmatised as Aids orphans, explains Thembi Ramokgopa, director of the Khanya Family Centre — an NGO that supports orphaned children in Vosloorus and Katlehong (a township east of Johannesburg with a population of 1,2-million).
Ramokgopa says the term “Aids orphan” implies that the children are HIV-positive themselves. The term orphans and vulnerable children are used instead.
“We try encourage HIV-positive parents to disclose their status to their children, but many don’t,” says Ramokgopa.
The twins still manage to attend school where Thando excels in History and English and Thabo does well in Maths.
Thabo says that his teachers cook warm meals for the pupils that can’t afford school lunch, but stop cooking when the matrics write exams. Thando says her friends sometimes share their food with her.
Vulnerable and orphaned children’s school fees are funded either by an NGO or the school, according to Marcha Neethling, the marketing manager of the NGO Heartbeat.
Neethling says that if children don’t have school uniforms or shoes, they may stay away from school because they don’t want to look different.
Schools are a good place to identify vulnerable children, says Aguire.
“If a child doesn’t pitch up at school there might be something wrong at home and a school can do a home visit or link the children up with an NGO … communities must pull together,” he says.
But Neethling says that if teachers are to help in identifying vulnerable children, they also need to be educated on issues surrounding HIV/Aids.
“Teachers shout at kids but won’t ask what’s wrong if they come late to class or miss school. [Children] could be looking after a sick parent or getting a younger brother or sister ready for school,” she explains.
Thando and Thabo, as well as another 92 child-headed households in the Katlehong area, get their monthly food intake from the Khanya Family Centre, which is easy for children to find as it’s on the main road of Katlehong.
Like other NGOs such as Heartbeat, the centre gives out monthly food parcels consisting of high-energy carbohydrates and proteins such as rice, flour, tinned tuna and porridges.
If the children cannot make it to the centre because they are looking after a sick parent, the organisation will send a volunteer or caregiver to the children’s house.
Nation Zani (19), a grade-eleven student, lives in a two-bedroom shack in Katlehong with his younger brothers, aged 11 and 13. They have been living without parents for five years.
Zani says he makes porridge for breakfast as well as supper because his younger brothers have allergic reactions to the tin used in canned foods.
Zani, a talented artist who loves music, says he screams at his younger brothers “like a parent” because when he comes home from high school he finds their uniforms scattered all over the house.
Like most students nearing the end of high school, Zani’s biggest concern is what he’ll do next.
“I want to study music engineering … I want to express myself to the nation but I can’t get that opportunity because of financial problems, and other things are more important [referring to his brothers].”
At the end of every month, Zani’s parents would come home with Shoprite packets of food, he says. “Now, when I see other parents coming with packets, it’s like a wound inside here [points to his chest].”
Mandla,* a chubby sixteen-year-old, is brought to the Khanya Family Centre for food by a community caregiver. He says there isn’t any food for him and his two brothers (19 and nine) in their three-bedroom shack in Katlehong.
A staff member at the centre quickly gathers together a sack of rice, two bags of flour, a bag of porridge and two bags of peas. “Usually they get more but this is an emergency,” she said.
Mandla’s mother died of Aids in August and his father died six years ago. His older brother dropped out of school in grade eight to support his siblings, but because his job as a ceiling repairman is only temporary, they often can’t afford food.
When there isn’t enough food for all three of them, Mandla says he won’t eat so that his nine-year-old brother can eat. “Even if I don’t eat, [my brother] must eat.
“My mom used to talk a lot and now there’s just silence at home … My brother likes to shout at me a lot. Sometimes he wants to be beat me and I don’t know why. I just shut my mouth … I always think about [my parents] when I’m not playing [soccer], but when I play, I forget everything.”
Ramokgopa says family dimensions and roles change due to HIV/Aids, especially in child-headed households.
“The head of the house might feel like the younger children are not respecting them and the young children might resent the head for bullying them or being a mother or father,” she explains.
If child-headed households are not given a caregiver by an NGO or the community, extended families usually take care of the children.
But for Emmenuel Sibisi, a slim and talkative 20-year-old who lives alone after his parents’ death, even extended family can be neglectful. Sibisi says that his aunt (the only family he has left) doesn’t want to see him. “My aunt doesn’t come here. I go to her. But when you’re always going to someone and they’re not coming to you, they don’t want you,” he says.
Sibisi says he writes poetry to cope with the silence around the house. “If I’m sitting and thinking about something, I’ll analyse it and write it down to express the way I feel at that moment,” he says.
Thando, who doesn’t want to have her own children but wants to be a social worker so she “can help lots of children”, says that she misses her parents but she has to accept their deaths.
*Not her/his real name