Soul City, a developmental and health advocacy NGO, has launched a campaign to empower and promote schools as places where orphans and vulnerable children can get care, love and support.
The campaign is known as Schools as Nodes of Care and Support for Vulnerable Children. It was motivated by the increasing phenomenon of child-headed families – because of the devastating effects of poverty and the HIV/Aids pandemic in most rural parts of the country – and recent incidents of school-based violence.
According to Children’s Institute, an NGO, in 2004 there were 106 741 children living in 53 000 child-headed houses across the country.
Soul City identified “the school community as the most viable location for the much-needed coordination and delivery of various forms of state, civil society and private sector assistance to address the particular needs of vulnerable children”.
In its submission to the recent South African Human Rights Commission hearings on school-based violence, the organisation argued that the current violence at schools must be seen in a “wider context of social disintegration that is part of the legacy of apartheid, but which is also maintained by current inequalities”.
Soul City believes the situation can be dealt with through a comprehensive approach that involves other sectors of society, and that it is through this multi-sectoral collaboration that additional resources can be mobilised to give schools more capacity to address some of these socio-economic challenges.
The national department of education has thrown its weight behind the campaign. Brennard Smith, from the department’s directorate of health promotion, said it supports the campaign because schools are the community’s first port of call.
“When members of the community need information, the first place they go to is the nearest school. More importantly, there are more children who are vulnerable and the responsibility of caring and supporting them falls on our schools,” said Smith.
Red tape day
Soul City held a “social jamboree” in Mpumalanga to test its Schools as Nodes of Care and Support for Vulnerable Children campaign.
The department of education and Mpumalanga departments of health, education, home affairs, social services and social security joined in to provide services to the residents of Block B, Tonga.
About 30 000 people thronged the yard of Matjeni Primary School to apply for birth certificates, identity documents, social grants, school exemptions, visual screening, immunisation and more.
Matjeni Primary is one of the schools that bears the brunt of some of the challenges posed by orphans and vulnerable children in and around Tonga.
This problem is compounded by the fact that most of these children are born of immigrant parents, predominantly from Swaziland and Mozambique. Despite qualifying for citizenship based on the length of time spent in South Africa, they still cannot obtain identity documents or birth certificates in order to access basic government services, such as pension grants.
Mavis Mthembu (not her real name), who is in her 90s, has been living in South Africa since 1976. She takes care of six grandchildren whose parents have died from HIV/Aids. The family lives in a dilapidated mud house that looks as though it might collapse at any time.
The fact that she does not have an identity document condemns her grandchildren to untold hardships. One of the boys has to bunk classes in order to do menial jobs for a meagre R50 a month. “Things get so bad sometimes that they spend days without eating or washing,” said one of the caregivers from charity Thembalethu Home-Based Care, who did not want to be named.
Mthembu at least has experience in raising children, but 13-year-old Thando Mbele (not his real name) has been thrown into the deep end. He lives with his two younger sisters in a dingy two-roomed shack. The conditions in this shack are sub-human. It is virtually empty, with only a handful of tattered clothes, blankets bundled in a corner and a few ageing cooking pots and utensils in what serves as their kitchen.
Thando has never met his father, who deserted them, and his mother died in July this year from a suspected HIV/Aids-related illness. As a grade seven learner he is forced to juggle his schoolwork with household chores.
Although Thembalethu Home-Based Care intervenes in these types of situations, the bulk of the responsibility falls on schools.
Teachers are also overloaded. Nomathemba Mngomezulu, a head of department at Matjeni Primary School, said they have 64 orphans and 124 vulnerable children out of 853 learners.
To deal with these challenges, the school has formed a support group that comprises all life-orientation teachers. The team works closely with school governing body members to identify families that need help. Mngomezulu heads up the team.
Some of her colleagues have adopted orphans. Although they are keen to help out, she said, the going is really tough. “Sometimes I use sleeping tablets or even get booked off because of stress. I also do not have time to attend to my own family needs,” said Mngomezulu.