Moderated by SAfm presenter Rowena Baird
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), there are an estimated 3.7-million orphans in South Africa.
Close to half of those have lost their parents to Aids-related diseases and there are many more living with sick and bedridden caregivers.
About 150 000 children are believed to be living in child-headed households.
A panel of experts discussed the question of how society can help eradicate South Africa’s scourge of orphaned and vulnerable children at a Mail & Guardian Critical Thinking Forum held in partnership with Old Mutual, Nedbank and SAfm this week at the Afrika Tikkun Community Centre in Alexandra.
Moderated by SAfm presenter Rowena Baird, the panelists included Mark Lubner, chief executive of Afrika Tikkun, Setlamorago Thobejane, chief of the Bapedi ba Mmafefe and national organiser of the Congress of Traditional Leaders, Dr Rosalie September, the chief director of monitoring and evaluation with the department of women, children, and people with disabilities, Heidi Loening-Voysey, orphans and vulnerable children specialist at Unicef, and Sibongile Mkhabela, chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
“There is a lot of money coming from government to aid orphaned and vulnerable people, but the challenge is that NGOs need to work better with one another. They need to partner with relevant organisations to deliver in the overall needs of the children,” said Lubner.
Thobejane said that another issue is the fact that traditional communities are changing due to globalisation.
“In the past, traditional communities used to be one big family that would take care of children irrespective of who the parents are. However, people are living more individual lives and closing themselves off from the rest of the community. As people migrate away from rural communities, they learn new ways that inevitably lead them away from a communal way of life,” he said. He feels that campaigns need to start with pregnant mothers so they are in a position to make informed decisions for their children.
“Quite often, children are born with the intense anger of the mother who feels ill-equipped to properly take care of the baby. As such, we have started to encourage traditional communities to lead awareness campaigns driven around pregnant women to make them aware of health and other issues related to children. But one of the biggest issues is the ‘do not care’ attitude of people. Irrespective of our beliefs, we need to focus on the value of life and contributing to the well-being of our children wherever possible.”
Growing concern
September said the country should be worried about what has happened around our children.
“When we embraced the constitution in 1994, the government made a social contract with its citizens,” she said. “But we have started to lose sight of that and have not embraced it enough. We all have a degree of responsibility in terms of what has happened.”
For its part, she said, government has done a lot in terms of putting a policy framework in place to look after children.
“But we need an earlier start in terms of interventions. We need to make a considerable investment as a society to invest in the early childhood development of children. While the best beginning a child can have is with its parents, we as a civil society need to support children as well.”
September felt that NGOs spend too much time working against each other and competing in the market instead of partnering. Unicef’s Loening-Voysey said South Africa should also take advantage from lessons learned elsewhere.
“The creation of a protective environment is key. Within that, a legislative framework that supports partners and communities is important,” she said.
Mkhabela said there are clearly still a lot of gaps to address in society.
“We are not dealing with a business as usual situation, but an extraordinary amount of orphans. This means that the usual models of care cannot be applied.”
What is Afrika Tikkun?
Afrika Tikkun was founded with a vision to create a sustainable future for the children of South Africa.
The word “tikkun” can roughly be translated as meaning love and to help repair the world. And those are traits that chief executive Mark Lubner takes to heart.
“People often forget that children are valuable members of our society and form the very fabric of the world in which we live.
“Afrika Tikkun provides those reminders and work closely with communities to help develop and implement models that can help take care of children,” he says.
With a mission to invest in education, health and social services for children, youth, and their families through its community centres, Afrika Tikkun operates with the principle of cradle to career.
Lubner explains: “We focus on the development of children from an early age right through to the job world. But we know all too well that this task is too big for any one organisation. As such, we need to work together with other NGOs and the private and public sectors.”
At the Alexandra community centre, Afrika Tikkun is currently employing approximately 100 people from the area.
The centre has been developed to provide a family support structure to look after critical families who need assistance, an early childhood development centre and a youth development programme that provides a computer centre and sport facilities.
“The strategy is for the youth to use these facilities to empower themselves. We also work closely with private sector companies to have job postings available in the community centre.”
This article forms part of a supplement paid for by Nedbank and Old Mutual. Contents and photographs were supplied and signed off by Nedbank and Old Mutual