“I have a Dream”

Nontsasa Nyovane of Siyakhathala Orphan Support in Khayelitsha

Story by Bernedette Muthien (info@engender.org.za, Mobile 083 345 0552, www.engender.org.za) On behalf of WHEAT Trust. 

Siyakhathala Orphan Support was co-founded by Nontsasa Nuyovane and four other women during 2008. They care for the needs and development of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs), child-headed families and teenage mothers, assisting the community in breaking down barriers and discrimination against these children. Led by women, Siyakhathala is staffed and managed entirely by thirteen volunteers.

Their office is in a primary school in Khayelitsha, an impoverished Cape Flats township, where they work in five primary and three high schools. Nontsasa says that Khayelitsha has eight primary and five high schools, but that they do not have people working in all the schools yet, since “we have a problem with travel allowances. We don’t have enough funds to work with all the schools yet.”

In primary schools they educate learners on issues such as HIV&AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), avoiding or managing teenage pregnancy and identifying signs of childhood abuse. Working in close collaboration with school management, they offer workshops in individual classes, due to typical township classroom overcrowding. In high schools they offer workshops for pregnant teens and teenage mothers, and work with targeted families affected by teenage pregnancy, offering training workshops and psycho-social support.

They support child-headed families in the form of school uniforms, stationary and other school needs, food parcels and clothing, and also assist the children with their school work. All their child clients live in shacks which they often have to provide and even renovate for the children. Siyakhathala does home visits and assists the children to apply for social grants. Children visit their office after school, where they complete homework, play and on Saturdays work with volunteer students from the University of Cape Town.

Their food gardens in the local school yard are maintained by male volunteers from the community. “We give the children veggies from our gardens and we cook for them in our small kitchen. The children take the leftovers and parcels of fresh veggies from the gardens home. They also get small food parcels that are donated each month. At the end of the year a friend buys groceries for them,” describes Nontsasa. They have just started planting medicinal herbs in the garden.

On Saturdays the children attend extra school classes and are helped with their homework. Each month Siyakhathala identifies “one family in need, an orphanage or a home for the elderly, and we spend time with them. They learn to give back to the community. We give them support and veggies,” says Nontsasa.

Their parenting skills project empowers mothers to care for children, to identify symptoms of child abuse and how to support children affect by HIV&AIDS. Nontsasa says they encourage families to take charge of their own food security and “not to depend on government grants. We plan to take children on holiday camps, but we lack funds now.”

WHEAT Trust funded their staff development, with members completing computer courses. WHEAT also supports their food gardening project. WHEAT also trained Siyakhathala’s co-founder and secretary, Bekeka Vanga, born in 1970, and she now runs their office. Despite Bekeka’s devotion and success, many of their unpaid volunteers leave the organisation after completing training, for more lucrative employment opportunities. While not having had previous experience, Bekeka is now a trained counsellor, thanks to Siyakhathala’s collaboration with WHEAT.

Born in the Eastern Cape in 1968, abandoned by her young mother and raised by her widowed grandmother, Nontsasa has two children, aged 25 and six, and lives without a husband. The children have different fathers. Nontsasa shares that the first father abandoned her, while the second father, with whom she has had a relationship since 2006, still supports his child. As Nontsasa puts it, “He’s a divorcee, we choose to not marry. In our culture it seems marriage doesn’t work. The men can’t commit. They say they love the women, but after a while they start coming home late, etc. We don’t stay together, which helps the relationship to work better. Mostly he visits me once a week on the weekend. It’s safer like that for me. He is very supportive of his son and loves him, and I’m happy for that. He works elsewhere the rest of the time. Sometimes he visits early evening in the week but has to leave very early because he starts work very early. I wake at 5.30am for transport. For me it’s the way I want my relationship to be. Most of the time I’m at work, sometimes weekends I have workshops, etc, I come home very tired. We live in a proper house, but before we lived in a shack for many years. I only got a brick house last year.”

Nontsasa’s story echoes the experiences of many South African women, abandoned or abused by men. She also communicates her disappointment in a previous eight-year relationship with an unmarried man who “had a nice car and stayed alone in a nice house. We spent most of our time together. After work we had supper in his house. In between those times he was cheating. So that’s why I don’t want someone to be so close to me. I was so disappointed I stayed without a boyfriend for three years; I didn’t want to see a man in front of me. He slept with my best friend, had affairs with married women, behind my back. On weekends when I went to church, in my absence he did this. That’s why I choose to be independent.”

There is such “a huge need in the community, orphans and children are abused and raped, families don’t care,” says Nontsasa, which is why she has chosen to work with these vulnerable and abandoned children. “I was also an orphan when my mother abandoned us and my grandmother was there for me. I should stand up for the rights of orphans because I was also an orphan myself. This is where I belong.”

Apart from her passion and deep commitment to working with children, Nontsasa is well qualified for her work. She has completed courses in child abuse, counselling, psycho-social support and many other courses over many years. Eventually she even completed her high school matriculation. Nontsasa’s dream is to study social work part-time. May her dream become a reality, and enable her to serve her community for many decades to still come.