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Warning: This story contains descriptions of child mortality that some readers may find disturbing.

It was the ‘70s and a young Sylvia* and her family were living in Nyanga East. It was a time when strict pass laws were in place, and the family’s movements were heavily restricted, affecting where they could live and work. Her family did not have the right passbooks for Nyanga, so Sylvia’s father dug a large hole in the middle of their small house for the family to hide in when the police came to check their passes.

One night, the police were checking passes in Sylvia’s community and they came to her family’s home. Sylvia was nine months pregnant at the time and she was too slow to climb into the into the hole that her father had built. The police saw that she did not have the correct pass, and they arrested her.

19 years old and terrified, Sylvia was taken to the court in Cape Town where she was sentenced to three months in prison. They sent her to a hospital ward cell for pregnant women.

“I entered and heard the key turning in the lock as the door closed behind me,” she recalls. “The first thing that I saw in the cell was several dead babies at the foot of their mothers’ beds.” Sylvia soon learnt that the mortuary only came once a week to collect the babies who did not survive birth, so the mothers in the cell were forced to live with the dead bodies of their children until the next collection.

Heavily pregnant, Sylvia knew it was only a matter of time before she went into labour. With no nurses or doctors around, she was scared for her own life and for the life of her unborn child. “Another woman in the cell told me that she would help me when I started going into labour – but then she said that I would have to pay her first. I didn’t know who I could trust.”

When her first contractions came, Sylvia took herself to the bath. She made sure to keep very quiet so as not to draw attention to herself. “I sat in the bath and I prayed to God, I told him ‘You are the only one who can help me now.’” Sylvia stayed in the bath for as long as possible but the baby did not come. She decided to return to bed and soon after, she gave birth to a baby boy.

There was no way to cut the umbilical cord and the door was locked, so they could not call for a nurse. One of the women in the cell climbed onto the back of another woman and shouted for help through a small hole in the ceiling. Eventually, they heard footsteps. A nurse came in, cut the umbilical cord and left. “I will never forget the sound of the key in the door as she walked away,” says Sylvia.

Sylvia’s son, now 51 years old, survived the birth but he has been left with severe developmental challenges. “I do not know if this was caused by the birth, or maybe because I was unable to breastfeed,” she says. For the first two months of her son’s life, Sylvia was only able to feed him water and half-cooked mielie meal.

Sylvia’s son is very vulnerable as a result of his developmental challenges and even though he is a grown man, he is an easy target for gangs. “My son has had to be supervised for his whole life. Today, he cannot be left unattended because he likes to wander away from home.”

If Sylvia wants to leave the house or come to the senior club, her daughter must stay home to watch him. “I am so worried about him. I am 75 years old now – what will happen when I am no longer here to look after him?”

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Sylvia attends the Masibambane Senior Club daily, where she is provided with two warm meals, healthcare and counselling services, income-generation projects and recreational activities. She is one of over 1,000 seniors who attend Ikamva Labantu’s senior clubs.

*Real names have not been used.

By donating R300 a month, you can provide an elderly citizen like Sylvia with daily meals & safe transport to our clubs.

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“In 1976, I was working as a domestic worker in Cape Town when my employer told me that there was trouble in the townships and that I should go home. The schoolchildren were protesting and the police were beating and killing them. My daughter was just 6 years old at the time and I was worried about her, so I left to go find her. When I arrived home, I was so relieved to find her safe inside. She made me laugh because even though she was so young, she was dressed up and shouting ‘Black power! I am ready to fight!’ My daughter was like me – she believed in fighting for freedom.

I grew up in Nyanga when the pass laws were very strict. We couldn’t even move from one township to another without a permit. The government wanted to divide us. At night, the police would go door-to-door to check our passes. I was 15 years old and people around me had started to throw away their passes in protest. The police retaliated by sending some people back to the Transkei, arresting and even killing others. They called us monkeys. I threw my own pass book away three years later. I said ‘no more!’.

I took part in a lot of protests but there is one night that I will never forget. The police came to my community and they burnt down all the houses. Many people were killed and shot. It was a terrible night. We lost our home and everything we owned – and because we had no rights, we didn’t know where we could go next. For a while, I slept on the floor of a church with my children, until my family could fix up my house again.

Many of my family members were killed in the struggle. My cousin was an activist in exile for a long time. When he came back, the police found him. They called our whole family together and then they killed him in front of us. I knew that I could never stop fighting for our freedom because of my family members who died in the struggle.

Years went by and Mandela was released. I watched his speech on my black and white TV and I hung on to his every word. We were so excited to vote. We didn’t not understand this voting thing but we were excited, whatever it was! On the day, we were dressed and ready to vote at 4am! It was an exciting day. Everything was new. Mandela won. The ANC won. We won. And we felt relief.

Mandela served us very well. But today, our leaders have forgotten that it was us that put them there. It was us that also fought. South Africa is not what Mandela fought for now and it is not what we fought for. It is not what we thought it would be.

Our people are still living in very small houses. They say we are free but we do not feel free. There is no progress or success and there is still so much poverty. I do not even feel safe in my own home. When I come home from the senior club, I lock myself in my house because the gangsters know that I live alone. I am not free from the crime and I find it hard to trust the police. When you are a grandmother living alone, you are a target. We still have hope that things will get better. We still have hope. We will never throw in the towel.”

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Kholiswa Zwana attends the Masincendiswe Senior Club daily, where she is provided with two warm meals, healthcare and counselling services, income-generation projects, recreational activities and companionship. She is one of over 1,000 seniors who attend Ikamva Labantu’s senior clubs.

By donating R300 a month, you can provide an elderly citizen like Kholiswa with daily meals & safe transport to our clubs.

Ethel Fanelo was born in Cape Town in 1949. Now 69 years old, she lives at her home in Nyanga with her four grandchildren, her sister, and her sister’s husband. Ethel receives a pension grant of R1,600 ($135) per month which she uses to buy food and basic necessities.

But as with many elderly people in South Africa, this pension is stretched across the extended family and very little, if anything, is left for the senior’s own self-care.

“The pension is better than nothing but it’s not enough for my grandchildren and myself, and I have to pay the rent too,” says Ethel. “My daughter helps by giving me food when I am short.”

Ethel attends the Noluthando 2 Senior Club, where she has opted to join the Relate beading project. In partnership with Ikamva Labantu, this project allows seniors to earn supplementary income from beading bracelets for the non-profit organisation, Relate.

“The beads have allowed me to be a good grandmother,” says Ethel. “I use all the money from beading to buy bread and to help with bus fares for the children’s school.”

Ethel is one of 18 seniors at her club who have joined the beading project. Collectively, they earned R27,875 ($2,345) in 2017. Sazi Gunya, the Relate Project Manager, remarks that the club is very good at beading. “Especially me!”, Ethel chimes in.

And she may well be one of the best – craftwork is not new to Ethel. When she divorced her husband of 11 years, she started working as a seamstress to make ends meet for her two young daughters.

“I love sewing and I still have a sewing machine in my house but I’m too old to use it now. That’s why I like beading – because my hands need to work. If I don’t bead my hands will get stiff; I need the exercise. These beads make me happy!”

Ethel Fanelo attends the Noluthando 2 Senior club daily, where she is provided with two warm meals, healthcare and counselling services and exercise activities. She is one of 410 seniors taking part in the Relate income-generation project across 19 Ikamva Labantu senior clubs.

Each afternoon, as the school day ended in a rural village in the Eastern Cape, 15-year-old Lindiwe Dlakala would settle down with some homework. It was 1989 and against the backdrop of a country in the grips of Apartheid, she was determined to work towards a more hopeful future. Armed with the knowledge gained during school hours, Lindiwe would tackle homework late into the evening; but it wasn’t just her own homework that she was working on.

When the last class of the day ended, Lindiwe transitioned from pupil to teacher. “I used to teach other children after school, because there was no educated person in their home. I would visit the homes of grandmothers in my village and help their grandchildren with their homework.”

At just 15 years old, Lindiwe was already setting the groundwork for what would become a lifelong career.

Today, the 44-year-old is Principal at her own pre-school in Khayelitsha. Founded in 2013, Ethembeni Educare cares for 67 children, aged 0-5, from the surrounding area.

Lindiwe’s pre-school has been registered for one year now, though the process to reach registration status took almost twice as long.

In South Africa, a pre-school needs to be registered with the Department of Social Development in order to access an early learning subsidy, a form of government funding. But this can be a long process with many delays and challenges.

According to provincial government officials, there are about 2,000 unregistered pre-schools in the Western Cape.

To meet the requirements for registration, Ikamva Labantu assisted Lindiwe in upgrading her pre-school. “I had to change all the doors and floors. We needed to have one toilet per 20 children, so I changed the bathrooms too.”

“I spent a lot of money upgrading the pre-school. I used money from school fees and from my own savings and slowly, with the help of my husband, we fixed up the pre-school. My husband helped me a lot because he knows that this is my dream,” Lindiwe says.

For an informal pre-school with no external funding, an exercise like this is often unaffordable, making registration a distant reality for thousands of pre-schools across the country.

But together with Fezeka Sibidla, a community-based worker from Ikamva Labantu, Lindiwe overcame the first major obstacle to registration in 2015, when she received the stamp of approval for zoning. “This is the first bridge to cross” says Fezeka, who specialises in consulting pre-school principals on the registration process. “Once you have zoning and a brick structure, it’s easy to get the other clearances.”

But even with a registration certificate in hand, Lindiwe still has to apply to renew her funding this March. And that funding is as important now as it was pre-registration.

Lindiwe charges just R200 ($17) a month for school fees, which she uses to pay salaries for her four practitioners. “Sometimes I don’t get a salary of my own because I want to satisfy the staff.”

Fezeka echoes this statement, saying: “We know that she needs to keep her staff – whatever you do, you make sure that your staff are happy. No staff, no pre-school!”

“I also need to give the children food, toys and stationery,” Lindiwe continues. “The DSD funding does help with salaries, food and maintenance –so there is some change, but not enough. Our staff still only receive R1,500 ($126) per month.”

Fundraising attempts within the community have been unsuccessful, with some parents struggling to even afford the school fees. “I will never chase the child away because of this,” says Lindiwe. “I need to take care of them because I need our country to have educated children.”

When she opened the doors to Ethembeni in 2014, Lindiwe looked after 20 children. Today, at almost 70 children, the pre-school is still growing. “The parents cry to us when we tell them that the pre-school is full. We need a bigger structure now; I will keep growing this pre-school until I die.”

True to her word, Lindiwe plans to apply for Grade R certification this year from the Department of Education; this would allow her to open a Grade R class at Ethembeni. “We give the children a good education. We even do graduations for the older children. Last year we graduated 26 children; in 2014 it was just 14.”

Although this is Lindiwe’s pre-school, Fezeka has walked the road to registration with her and is clearly proud of the outcome. “The place has been transformed. It was not colourful outside before, it was just brick walls. You can see that Lindiwe is using the funding in a good way. It is bright and colourful now and everyone can see that this a pre-school,” she says.

And the changes aren’t only physical; testament to Lindiwe’s dedication, the children’s learning has improved too. “We have a relationship with the local schools,” says Lindiwe. “The teachers come to me and tell me that our children are doing really well – they are writing properly and are at the right stage of development.”

This is, of course, the ultimate goal for any pre-school; to get children ready for the start of their schooling career.

More than 20 years since Lindiwe first started helping other children with their homework, she is still hard at work, striving towards a better future for South Africa.

Lindiwe took part in the Ikamva Labantu Principals Training programme, learning about leadership and management. Two of her staff members have done the Practitioners Training programme where they learnt practical skills for the classroom and how to engage with children and parents.

Fezeka is a community-based worker who works for the Ikamva Labantu Registration Help Desk; helping principals to navigate the registration process for pre-schools. We have reached 556 community pre-schools through this initiative.