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South Africa
In keeping with the Constitution of South Africa, the Vision of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund states that we “strive to change the way society treats children and youth” embracing all children who, through no fault of their own, are disadvantaged and do not have the means to reach the heights of maturity and success to which every child has a right.
South Africa is a developing country where poverty and unemployment are major contributors to the lifestyle and plight of large communities both urban and rural. The HIV/AIDS pandemic precipitates the problem. HIV positive parents have increased the vulnerability of children and levels of abandonment in hospitals, care centres and even in dustbins and along railway lines. It has been established that mothers who are informed they are HIV positive are increasingly abandoning their children, as they believe they will die imminently. It is also believed that many HIV positive mothers abandon their children, not because of their own HIV status, but as they fear that they will not be able to care for their HIV positive child who will become ill and die.
On 21 February this year, the Founder and Chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Mr Nelson Mandela, himself paid a special visit to the people and projects who help make the vision and practice of the Fund a reality.
Mr Mandela was shown around and introduced to staff members and was especially touched when taken through the injustices and horrors that children have to endure. After sharing stories, Mandela reflected on why he formed the Children’s Fund in the first place:
“We were driving back to the Presidency in Cape Town one cold winter’s evening, when I saw a group of street children and stopped to talk to them. The children asked me why I love them. This astounded me and I asked them why they ask this and they said that because every time I get money from overseas, I share it with them.”
It was after this interaction with abandoned children that our former president took it upon himself to do something about the development and nurturing of our children and his subsequent vision gave birth to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund recognises that it is in the best interest of the child to ensure that family support and parental care is maintained as far as is humanly possible. Our focus is on supporting and strengthening models of care that communities have in place, thereby preventing abandonment and providing a support system whereby the child remains in the care of its family and community.
When this primary aim of the Fund is not achievable and cannot be realised, the Fund looks to supporting communities who provide foster homes and extended families for abandoned babies and children.
Ideally the Fund’s involvement with families and communities should eliminate the need for placing children into institutions. Although seen as a last resort, the reality of the situation is that this is not an ideal world and therefore the Fund extends its support to various institutions who take over the role of the family and community – one such institution is the Carl Sithole Centre in Soweto, Johannesburg. Soweto is made up of 37 suburbs and the population is estimated at approximately 5 million people of African origin where there is general poverty in the community exacerbated by limited access to social grants.
Working with the Carl Sithole Centre, the following has been achieved:
- Reunion of young mothers with their families who were rejected because of their HIV status.
- 70% of the abandoned, HIV infected children are being hosted within families.
- Integration of abandoned toddlers into the day care centre.
- Abandoned babies whose life expectancy was limited due to their HIV status and who have been cared for by the Carl Sithole Centre have outlived this expectancy and are now about to embark on their schooling career.
The involvement of the community remains important to this project, in that members of the community assist by relieving care-givers at the centre on a regular basis by taking care of the children and providing moral support to the staff. Members of the community contribute to the nurturing of the abandoned children by taking them into their homes and exposing them to normal family life with its problems, sibling rivalry and interaction.
Other projects – the Karos and Kambro projects – encourage children living in the streets to rise above their plight. In association with the National and Gauteng Alliance of Street Children, the project’s primary focus is on theatre, art and development programmes, aimed to stimulate hidden talent in over 1000 children living in the street from Benoni to Pretoria. The project’s objective is to use theatre as a therapeutic intervention to enable children to speak out, be confident and continue to dream.
Mr Mandela, at his birthday celebrations in September this year, stated:
“My joy and what I firmly believe in is to let children be, and support the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in its business, working with children and not just for children. We understand and promote the notion that while children need to be guided, they also have a birthright and entrenched human rights to be whatever they want to be and they can achieve if they are given a space to dream and live out their dreams.”
The task is a mammoth one. The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund recognises the need for increased partnerships with organs of civil society – especially faithbased organisations – in ensuring that, through moral regeneration, a value system is put into place whereby children’s rights within the family and community are nurtured and protected.
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