There are thousands of orphans in South Africa who have lost their parents to HIV and AIDS. This week Siyayinqoba Beat It! looks at two households in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, one child-headed and the other home to one guardian and the 14 children she must care for. Each household has sought help from the government and in this episode we also ask what assistance is available and find out how guardians can access it.
At her home in Gauteng, Rebecca Mhlanga recalls her father being sick from the time she was 13. He died in 2005 and when her mother passed two years later it was left up to Rebecca to look after her four brothers and two sisters. Every day anew, she has to find ways to feed and school a family that now depends on her.
Four of her siblings go to school but Rebecca has to remain home to look after her youngest brothers as she cannot afford to send them to day-care. Rebecca and her siblings stay in their parents’ house in Ivory Park, an informal settlement East of Johannesburg, and depend solely on the money that she gets from the tenants who have rented outside rooms.
Rebecca lives in one of over 100 000 child-headed households in South Africa. Some of the biggest challenges these parentless family units face is accessing grants, paying school fees and growing up without emotional support. Rebecca receives little help from her community or neighbours.
However, some assistance is available. Loniah Mkhwanazi – a local community development worker – strives to connect people like Rebecca with the appropriate government departments and facilitates their applications for identity documentation and grants. This could also enable Rebecca to look for work and earn more money to support her siblings.
In the next insert, Wendy Khumalo meets Lindokuhle Shezi who has been living with HIV for 21 years. She is a jobless, single mother with two children and guardian to the 12 nieces and nephews her three sisters left behind, having themselves died of the illness.
She struggles to get by, unable to access welfare grants due to a lack of documentation – she has been told she requires an identity document as well as certificates for her deceased siblings and their children but, at R70 each, she says she cannot afford to provide birth certificates for 14 children.
And so she stresses and worries about a time when she may “lose hope or die.” Living openly with HIV herself, she knew her sisters were positive. She has had to deal with the aftermath of their refusal to disclose to her, or their children, while they were still alive.
While still often a challenge to access, the provision of grants significantly eases the lives of guardians of AIDS orphans. Lindokuhle teaches the children valuable skills, like growing their own food, but still she battles to make sure the school doesn’t send them home for unpaid fees. Her courage in living openly leads to her undertaking to test her nieces and nephews as she understands it is important for their future. It will require significant support – emotional and otherwise – to ensure that future.