Cape Town – A Dunoon mom raising her disabled 12-year-old daughter has reached out for help, saying she was struggling as a single parent to afford the necessities her child needs.
Sizini Ncube, 36, is employed as a domestic worker and said her daughter, Mukudzei Vherem, who has cerebral palsy, was also diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of four months.
“There have been so many challenges that we have been facing since then. My daughter can’t speak, she can only call ‘mama’ though she hears everything you say.
“She can’t help herself to the toilet and she is still in nappies which are very expensive for me to buy every month. It’s more challenging now that she has started menstruation,” she said.
The mother of two says life took a turn for her when the school her daughter was attending advised her to keep her at home during the pandemic.
“Meanwhile, I have to work. My 15-year-old daughter comes back from school and she takes over until I come back from work. I am renting a small room in a shared house with five other families.
“I use the designed chair that was donated to us to help her in the toilet so that way she is not exposed to any infection and chronic disease from using the same toilet that everyone is using where we are staying.
“Now that she is growing up and becoming a young girl, I don’t have enough money to get her proper clothes of her size and no money for check-ups and physiotherapy at Red Cross, which is a few kilometres away from where I stay.
“I am just a single mother who is juggling work and trying to take good care of my young daughter. I have tried to get help from different organisations but to no avail.
’’Any kind of help will come in handy because I am struggling to even feed her and her elder sister who is helping after school,“ Ncube said.
PhD candidate for health and rehabilitation studies at Stellenbosch University, Willson Tarusarira, said Ncube has also made some arrangements with spaza shop owners to borrow nappies then pay at the end of the month.
“Sizini’s husband disappeared when the child was diagnosed with epilepsy. Men running away from their families after the child is diagnosed with a disability is not new in Zimbabwe and other African countries.
’’Disability is still associated with witchcraft and is blamed on the mother,” he said.
Ncube said she also aspires to enrol her daughter in a special school in Parklands but lacks the funds.
She can be contacted on 078 128 9521.
Cape Times