Like the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo’s budget speech of two years ago, Tiyiselani Manganyi seems a long forgotten memory.
Masondo promised that by 2030 the lives of Johannesburg’s children would be dramatically different. Tiyiselani was to be a symbol of this brighter future.
She appeared on television at these events as being representative of Johannesburg’s children. She was promised educational bursaries, a playground and a school. According to Masondo she would have a job by the age of 34. Her progress was going to be tracked and her life monitored. But progress has been slow and monitoring erratic.
Life is clearly better for the Manganyis than it was 10 years ago and improvements can be seen in areas like housing, water and sanitation. Yet a lack of infrastructure is still evident: it’s next to impossible to find the Manganyi family home as streets are not signposted.
“Count the roads on the right and turn left at the third road on the right,” Solomon, her father says, and we still manage to get lost. She lives in a two-bedroomed house in Klipfonteinview. The face-brick house is sparsely but fashionably furnished with whitewashed walls and the television is an older model.
Many of the neighbouring houses are colourfully painted although they don’t have walls, only wires strung between poles. Patches of green lawn can be seen sparingly dotted around and the roads, although tarred, are too narrow for more than one car at a time and have no names. We drive carefully to avoid the children playing in the streets, two children sitting on a driveway wave at us as we turn around, looking for the house numbers.
When Solomon arrives at home he gets out of a shiny, black Kia. He’s a consultant who spends all his time on the road, solving doctors’ queries. Tiyiselani is seven years old and spends her day like any other child on holiday. “Today I play, in the streets, skipping with my friends.”
“Tiyiselani is an example. The city said that by 2030 she would be guaranteed work, they would give her a bursary and educate her through university,” says Solomon.
She was chosen as the face of South African children because of her liveliness and her leadership abilities after she was spotted at a tent that passes for a church. Johannesburg city planned to use the livewire child as its everycitizen, one who would symbolise its 2030 developmental plan.
Tiyiselani says “they promised me a school and they say there will be a playground”. But she still plays on an open piece of veld near her house.
She gets up at five in the morning to travel 40km to school, only returning again at five in the afternoon.
At the WSSD, she recited a poem on television; Tiyiselani proudly repeats it before running off to fetch a T-shirt, her only gain from the summit. “We are the children of South Africa; we are entitled to enjoy the expectations of the future for every single girl and boy.”
The expectation Solomon had for his only child was to send her to a better school, which he cannot afford without a bursary. Tiyiselani is currently in grade one and her brightness is indicated in the 89% year total mark on the report card she shows me.
Ivi, her mother, says that, coincidentally, after the Mail & Guardian started trying to find Tiyiselani, she had a call from the mayor’s office telling her that the promises may take up to two years to come to fruition. “If they adopt her for 30 years, they must look after her. How long is it going to take?”
Despite the fact that she is an everychild that the city promised to track regularly, the M&G spent three weeks trying to trace Tiyiselani; the family makes no appearance in Telkom listings, or on the Internet. It was only after several phone calls to the Johannesburg metro offices that we were given a number that was not in use and were eventually given the correct number by a spokesperson for Johannesburg city after many more calls.
Ivi wonders if, as the face of Johannesburg’s children has been forgotten, have all the other children also been forgotten?
Tiyiselani is an example of the government’s initiatives — 30 years from now there will be drastic changes in the quality of all children’s lives, says the mayor’s spokesperson, Kgotso Chikane. “The mayor cannot choose one child over another … she was used as an example of all children, no promises were made to her as an individual.”
How south Africa’s children are faring
Census 2001 (on www.gov.za) reported:
The Unicef State of the World’s Children report 2004 gives the following statistics for South Africa’s children: