Durban - As communities around the world
today pay tribute to those who valiantly
fought, and in many cases lost against
HIV/Aids, South Africans are celebrating
a group of warriors who are making the
battle easier to endure.
These warriors, some of them with
sticks, some slightly stooped, and most
with grey hair, are the grandmothers
who have organised themselves into
various units and have taken on the role
of mother, father, breadwinner and caregiver to their families and neighbours.
Early on Friday morning, as the mercury hit the mid-20s, the Bambanani
Hall in KwaNyuswa, an impoverished
village in the picturesque Valley of a
Thousand Hills outside Durban, came to
life for the 2019 Gogo of the Year event.
The red carpet was rolled out, gold
drapes framed the walls and hundreds
of elderly women dressed to the nines
in traditional gear and vibrant colours
streamed in from various rural areas.
The unrelenting heat did not deter the
women who had gathered – some shuffling, others holding on to each other
for support – from paying tribute to each
other and those who were so instrumental in the fight against HIV/Aids.
One of the first to arrive was Cwengi
Myeni, a retired nurse and co-ordinator of the Gogo Support Group programme. Myeni, from the Hillcrest
Aids Centre Trust (Hact), said it had
about 2 000 gogos in its 60 support
groups which were spread around 12
rural communities.
“It is my passion; I love to work
with people. The granny project is so
inspiring just to see the life of a person
changing,” Myeni said.
The Hillcrest Aids Centre Trust
provides psychosocial support, skills
development programmes and economic empowerment opportunities to
the women in the network.
Myeni said she had worked in the
Valley of a Thousand Hills since 1976
and realised that something needed to
be done to assist the gogos, when an
increasing number of people became
ill and the hospitals were too full to
assist them.
She said the gogos turned to Hact for
assistance and they were trained to be
home-based carers.
“We realised that the number of
grannies who had to take care of their
grandchildren were increasing. In some
cases, their parents were too sick to take
care of them or they had died. In other
cases, they had left the grandchildren
with their grannies to search for work
in other places,” she said.
Myeni said many organisations
flocked to the area to assist the communities and initially the elderly became
dependent on them for food and other
resources. Then Hact undertook HIV
education among them in an attempt to
make them independent, which resulted
in the formation of the Gogo Support
Groups in 2006.
“Now people from other provinces
are also starting support groups,” said
Myeni.
She said they taught the elderly how
to sew, create vegetable gardens, poultry
farming, beadwork and other skills
which would make them independent.
At the end of the six-month sewing
course, the gogos graduate and receive
a certificate, many of them for the first
time in their lives.
Myeni, 76, said: “Gogos also need
parenting skills because of the generational gap between them and their
grandchildren who know about social
media. Everything has changed from
when they were young or even bringing
up their own children.”
She said the gogos, some of whom
were even great-grandmothers, were
faced with teenage pregnancies, alcoholism, drug addiction… and not many
of them owned or understood smartphones, so had to be educated on a
range of things. Despite this, they were
resilient and had achieved much.
The head of the SA Grandmothers’
Movement, Zodwa Ndlovu, said many
were themselves HIV-positive.
“I’m one of them. I didn’t get it
in the usual way that people think. I
became infected while caring for my two
sick children at that time when there
was no treatment and our children were
dying like flies. I had a boy and a girl
and they also died,” she said.
Ndlovu said in the 1990s and early
2000s, many people “just died” because
antiretroviral drugs were not available
at government facilities and were too
expensive to get from private hospitals.
“You were just looking at your child
dying.”
Ndlovu, 68, from uMlazi, who also
runs an NGO called Siyaphambili, said
one day she decided to have herself
tested. The result came back positive.
Then she went to another clinic and got
the same result.
“Someone with HIV will always
think that maybe the machine is broken.
I was so depressed.”
She urged her husband to get tested
and all five tests came back negative.
She said at the time she was using
the money she had received when
she resigned from nursing to feed the
orphans of people who had died as a
result of Aids and the grandmothers who
took care of them.
Unlike the other gogos who gathered for the celebration in an array of
beautifully beaded traditional outfits,
she was dressed in black, the only colour
in her outfit coming from a single string
of pearls, and burgundy shoes. That’s
because she was responsible for lighting
the candle for those who had passed on
as a result of HIV/Aids.
“The only thing that made me come
out about my status is because I want
other people to be upfront. Don’t be
shy,” Ndlovu said.
She explained that grandmothers
were shy to talk about their problems
and needed people to advocate for them,
which was the purpose of the SA Grandmothers’ Movement.
“Even in their own homes they are
not secure with their own children and
grandchildren,” she said.
Ndlovu said many gogos around the
country were being robbed by family
members when they collected their
pension.
Many lived in constant fear because
they had been raped by their children
and grandchildren or attacked by community members who accused them of
witchcraft.
In many instances a single pension
had to support several generations in
one home and the societal burden they
carried was huge.
So far, the movement
has members in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
She said her organisation had
received support from the Canada-based
Stephen Lewis Foundation, which
assists community-based organisations
involved in HIV/Aids projects across
Africa.
Candace Davidson, chief executive
of the Hillcrest Aids Centre Trust, said
Friday’s Gogo of the Year event was to
celebrate the role of grandmothers in
their communities.
She said over the
past 10 or 15 years they’d seen a shift
in the way the gogos operated.
“Initially, they looked to what they
could get from the centre. But now,
they are driving the projects and
support groups.
“One group registered themselves
as a co-op, they built a link with a local
school and they are now sewing school
uniforms. It’s extra income for them
and they are supporting their school,”
said Davidson.
She said the gogos were the “backbone” within the communities because
the “middle generation” had been lost
as a result of Aids or because they had
moved for economic reasons.
The theme of this year’s World Aids
Day is “Communities make a difference”. These gogos have shown that
they are the embodiment of that.