Poverty at ground level
Marie Menhinnitt is Sponsorship Coordinator of the St Veronica Welfare Committee, a voluntary aid organisation based in Brisbane, which assists children’s education in economically poor countries.
In June I made my third visit to South Africa, as a gesture of solidarity with the people of an area which I had come to know and love from two previous, and much longer, stays in 1999 and 2000. I was based at Dwars River in Limpopo Province, known until recently as the Transvaal. Limpopo is one of the poorer and less developed provinces of South Africa, where migration of men to work in cities has led to social dis-ease and imbalance in family life, leaving 60% of the population female.
The province includes Venda, Sotho and Shangaan tribal homelands, artificially constructed during the apartheid regime (1948-1994), and most of the population resides in villages and rural areas.
My connection to the area is through a Catholic high school, St Brendan’s, with 600 pupils, about 65% of whom are boarders, and the rest gathered from the local villages. Parents of these day scholars (“learners” in South Africa) are bypassing the local government high schools for this fee-paying—though by no means elite—school because of the consistency of their very high matriculation pass rates, 95% compared to 35-50% in many local high schools. This provides opportunities and opens doors to universities and technikons.
South Africans are struggling to cope with the effects of the devastating HIV virus and millions of deaths caused by AIDS. The most profound social effect is that 90% of AIDS related deaths are occurring in the fertile/reproductive age group, 25 to 35. Another group disproportionately represented are children under ten, who have contracted the virus from their mothers during birth.
Demographers will have to grapple with the societal/economic/cultural effects of such a large gap in the population pyramid, which has not been seen since pandemics such as the Black Death in the Middle Ages.
There has been a huge increase in the number of orphans, defined as children who have lost at least one parent, and in the number of grandmothers trying to rear these young children and provide for their needs. Agencies predict that, soon, there will be a population of five million such orphans.
The post-apartheid government has had ten years in power since the heady days of Nelson Mandela’s release and term as first president of the new South Africa (the Rainbow Nation as it came to be called), so any changes in the economic reality of South African society should now be evident.
Despite earlier reluctance to equate the transmission of AIDS as being due to a virus, the present government is slowly providing anti-retroviral drugs to pregnant women, in a trial fashion, to reduce mother to infant transmission. It is estimated that 50% of children born HIV+ (estimated at 30% of all births) are now saved from an early death. There are also 300 specially developed centres, both private and government funded, providing Anti-Retroviral treatment to those affected with full-blown AIDS so that they can be restored to good health, live normal lives, and, in many cases, return to work. Presently these centres cater for about 145,000 people throughout the country. Another 40,000, mainly women, are attending AIDS health clinics, made possible by funds from Catholic Relief Services from the USA.
More and more people are realizing that education is the key to improving many aspects of life—earning sufficient salary to provide for basic needs, choosing employment, gaining knowledge of how a social system operates. Crèches and preschools have become one way in which South African society has responded to families overburdened with the care of children.
Though there is slow but continuing growth in the provision of government funding to improve vital services such as education and health there is no funding as yet for crèches/preschools. In Limpopo there are private and NGO funded training centres. One of these, Thusenang, outside Tzaneen, provides six-week courses in early childhood teaching, as well as sewing classes to give village women the opportunity to earn a little income for themselves. It also employs five field officers to help with on-going skills improvement. This training is not free (about A$2,000 to Level Two) so those in training as crèche teachers have to find some person/agency to provide funds. Participants must “live-in” and pay this cost, plus their transport, by taxi, which is the cheapest means of transport between villages.
As education in good nutrition and healthy living conditions help in the fight against HIV/AIDS, there is a law making it compulsory for all milling companies to include vitamin and mineral supplements in all bags of mealie meal (corn flour) for sale. As the staple diet of black South Africans, especially in the villages, is mealie porridge this is an excellent way of ensuring that the children are receiving sufficient nutrients for their mental and physical growth. One day I met a young man pushing a wheelbarrow along the dusty road, with an 80kg bag of mealie meal balanced across it. When he stopped for a rest, I chatted to him and asked him questions. He told me the bag cost 160 Rand and would feed a family of four for a month. The nutritional additives were printed on the bag.
My latest visit was primarily about visiting crèches and helping to resource them. I visited fifteen, part of a group of twenty helped by the Dwars River Catholic Parish outreach services. The parish has a pastoral team helping crèches by providing training and equipment, and helping AIDS sufferers by training home based carers. Those involved in both these areas are usually local village women, trying to address the problems at a grass roots level. Often, when death is near, the clinics and health centres have done “all they can” for the person with AIDS.
Because of the enormity of the HIV/AIDS pandemic there is a large amount of aid money available from wealthy countries. Volunteers, aid agencies, and churches are all working to enable people to access whatever money is available to help them. Slowly, the structures are being put in place to disperse this aid. For instance, the parish I was working in applied for, and secured, financial aid for its projects from diverse groups including the Siyabhabha Trust (the social justice arm of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference), the Solon Foundation (a Swiss group), the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Congregation, in Rome, Ireland and Australia, and private individuals and groups in Australia.
There was a wide range of facilities/training/equipment among these fifteen crèches. Numbers of children ranged between fifteen and eighty, and fees were between 20 and 40 Rand per month. This money provides daily food (using the six Rand per day food supplement from government feeding programmes), teachers’ salaries, rent if payable, equipment, etc. Many teachers told me that, though they have children who are eligible for the food grant, the government has not paid them since last September.
Orphaned and disabled children are eligible for further assistance. The possibilities of corruption, with guardians using the moneys for other purposes, is high. The government is being urged to introduce a Basic Income Grant for all South Africans. This would go a long way to breaking the poverty cycle by lifting four million people out of it. All children under four are eligible for a Child Support Grant of 170 Rand but this is almost impossible to get because of limited access to government offices, bungling, red tape and sheer inefficiency. Crèche teachers were often away, at a government office, trying to access such aid. Voluntary children’s agencies are pressuring government to extend the age, and increase the amount, as well as streamline the process of obtaining the grant.
Most of the parents/guardians find the fees somehow. A common source of income is from a grandmother/carer who receives an age pension which can supplement any other income coming into the family. Unemployment is high at 50% and many live at subsistence level or rely on the (little) social security or income from teachers, police, nurses, etc. Other sources of income are casual jobs on farms nearby and in the informal economy. Casual jobs are often poorly paid, seasonal and subject to market fluctuation. The informal economy (selling foodstuffs, artifacts, etc) has limited potential in a cash-strapped situation.
Culturally, Africans live communally and if one member of an extended family receives an income, that person is expected to contribute to the greater family needs. So, somehow or other, a certain amount of money comes into a family to enable it to survive, and to the crèches/preschools to enable them to function.
The physical environment of crèches varies. Some have good buildings, with spacious, well-equipped activity areas and well-trained teachers, plus safe cooking facilities. Some of these crèches are supported with grants from NGO’s, similar to the one I work with.
Others pay a small rent and are housed in church halls or Burial Society premises, often very run-down and in need of painting and repairs. One was even built over part of a village street and is marked for demolition. Cooking of the children’s lunch, porridge and soup made with spinach, cabbage and tomatoes, is done on gas burners, using large 21 litre cooking pots. However, in a couple of crèches, which were very poorly equipped and with no trained teachers, cooking is done on a kerosene stove. This is very dangerous especially when the stove is in the main learning area. It made me shudder, each time I visited, to think about the consequences of the large pot tipping over or the kitchen causing a fire.
Many crèche toilets are another potential danger to small children. The toilets in the villages consist of outhouses, with a long-drop, covered by a cement box, with an adult-sized seat hole. When children use this type of toilet, without adult supervision, there is a danger of falling into the hole below. In a couple of places two-litre plastic buckets (with lids) were being used as “potties” and emptied into the adult toilets. An organization with which I am connected donated funds to one crèche to construct three child-sized toilets, lower than a normal toilet, with a small step and a smaller hole to prevent a child falling through. However, in the crèches I visited, this was the only child-sized toilet block.
Before local parish aid became available to these fifteen crèches the children mostly slept on cement floors and were plagued with colds and coughs all winter. Provision of carpets and blankets has helped to alleviate this. Fifty-plus children often sleep close together, in rows, like sardines in a tin. In many crèches there were no tables for craft and art work or anywhere to store materials. Each child has a plastic chair which must be provided by the parents.
Another important resource of crèches is the vegetable/fruit garden which provides fresh vegetables for the children’s meals. Not all crèches are able to establish gardens because they have no access to water, or fences to keep out wandering goats and poultry.
Educational toys are a pretty exotic item, usually way down on the list of “needs” for survival. It was a joy for me to accompany teachers from four crèches, where the equipment was almost non-existent, and provide each of them with 1,500 Rand (about A$300) to spend. They worked together, comparing and chatting among themselves, and made a selection of toys and equipment covering a wide range of learning skills for young children.
Since my last visit in 2000 it heartened me no end to see, growing on the landscape of most villages, a sprouting of green water tanks, indicating that a spear had been put down and water found. This also told me that more money is now available in that village.
Limpopo is semi-desert (Africans were given the least fertile land during the apartheid forced removals) and there is little surface water, but a good supply of underground sources. So, I expect to see sinks and taps slowly appearing in crèche kitchens in the next five years. Two of them already have this facility. Otherwise all water has to be carried in containers and stored in large plastic basins or—for drinking—eighty-gallon plastic kegs.
It is not helpful to compare crèches in South African villages to those in Australian suburbs. The range of facilities and equipment in Australian crèches would be the envy of any South African teachers, and probably the sophistication of our teaching programmes would amaze them. Can we imagine working in buildings with cement floors, sometimes without electricity, in a climate where it often drops below 10°C in the winter?
Burial Societies have an important influence on village finances, because of large numbers of AIDS related deaths. It is very difficult to convince Africans not to follow long-held cultural traditions of lavish funerals, feeding all who come. Most people belong to a burial society and contribute a small sum each week. When a member dies there is a set amount paid to the family, or, if there are insufficient funds, people are asked to make a lump sum payment to help with the funeral. At a set time after the burial, when the grave has been enclosed and covered with a headstone, there is another ceremony of dressing the grave. The headstone is veiled, and a service conducted to unveil the stone as a mark of respect to the deceased. A meal is also provided after this service. These customs add another strain on the financial resources of the poor.
So I suppose I could sum up my impression, after my third visit, as principally one of hope for the future of people in Limpopo. The signs of a developing and growing economy are there, with the first supermarket, a new building supplies store, and a new variety store and police station at Matoks, the central point of all the linked villages near Dwars River. These have appeared since my 2000 visit.
People have already made the connection between being educated and having a better life, hence the proliferation of so many crèches in every village. This is a grassroots acknowledgement of the importance of caring for the youngest members of society. They are one of the most important resources for the future of South Africa.
As a visitor from a country with an unbelievably high living standard, compared with the area I visited, I often pause and look about me, and wonder why we live in a world with such a gulf between those with much (too much) and those with little (too little). While material goods do relieve the harshness of a daily struggle for survival, they do not ensure happiness. The poorest people are often the ones to provide us with a lesson in how to live, with their dignity and hope in the face of their struggles.
stveronica@gil.com.au