Mzwandile Magwaza sits on a tattered mattress next to his four-month-old niece, gently shaking a worn rattle. She fusses and whimpers, but he keeps at it until finally she drifts off to sleep.
His few possessions — a broken alarm clock, a nearly toothless comb, a torn book missing most of the pages — are tidily arranged on a wooden box next to his bed. A shirt and pair of shorts hang on a nail, clean but stained and torn.
His parents both died about six years ago, probably of AIDS, but no one really knows for sure. Here in South Africa's impoverished KwaZulu-Natal province, the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, most deaths these days are related to HIV infection. A few months ago, his older sister disappeared, leaving her newborn baby behind.
Outside the two-room shack, made of mud and straw and topped with scrap aluminum, the sun broils the small dirt yard. As his niece sleeps, Mzwandile glances through the entrance of the hut. His gaze lingers on a soccer ball lying in the dust, but only for a moment. He rises and folds a blanket on the mattress. Mzwandile is 15 years old.
Today, the number of AIDS orphans suddenly thrust into parenthood like Mzwandile is soaring in KwaZulu-Natal, the hardest-hit province in South Africa, long the hardest-hit nation in the world. (In 2005, South Africa's 5.5 million HIV cases was topped by India, with 5.7 million, for the first time, UNAIDS reports.)
By tradition, Zulus adopt all orphans, whether they're family or not. It's not unusual for 10 unrelated children to live with an elderly "auntie" or "granny." But the sheer number of orphans is overwhelming this centuries-old practice. "There's a word in isiZulu, ubuntu, that means 'helping other people in the community,'" says Rotarian Sithembiso Ndlovu, director of a local preschool district. "There should never be an orphan in South Africa."
By 2010, there will be 40 million AIDS orphans in 19 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, USAID predicts. Before the first AIDS case was reported 25 years ago, about 2 percent of South African children had lost one or both parents. Today, that figure stands at 10 percent.
In much of South Africa, older women, dressed in their best clothes and carrying umbrellas against the hot sun, walk along the roads every Saturday. Until recently, they'd be headed to a celebration — a birthday, a feast, a wedding. Now, most are going to funerals for their adult children. AIDS is wiping out an entire generation.
Rotarians in KwaZulu-Natal support several long-standing projects for AIDS orphans, including two traditional orphanages and a weekly pediatric clinic and soup kitchen for about 200 women and children.
Now, the Rotarians have stepped up their efforts by partnering with major shoe companies, including Clarks, which has annual global sales of US$1.8 billion and retail stores in more than two dozen countries. The project, called Soul of Africa, aims to rebuild impoverished, AIDS-damaged communities by starting with the youngest victims: AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children between the ages of one and five.
"Rotary can't find a vaccine for the AIDS virus," says Nick Phillips, past governor of District 9270. "But it sure as hell can help the young victims of the pandemic to grow up, find their feet, and become useful members of society."
Safe haven
KwaZulu-Natal is beautiful country, from the roaring Indian Ocean to the lush green veldt of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, home to game parks teeming with giraffes and zebras, vast country estates — and some of the poorest townships in South Africa. Here, rutted, garbage-strewn paths connect dilapidated huts. There's no running water. There's no electricity. There are practically no police. And there are very few jobs.
Through Soul of Africa, shoe companies are funding the bricks and mortar to build new preschools in these townships while Rotarians pay for just about everything else, including kitchen equipment, teacher training, books, toys, even gardening tools. The Rotarians also monitor expenditures, select and implement projects, and provide hands-on volunteer help.
The schools offer a safe haven for the day, along with education, nutrition, health care, and a range of other basic needs. Because many of the children are HIV-positive, infected by their mothers through birth or breast-feeding, they might even receive lifesaving antiretroviral drugs here, which are becoming more available in South Africa.
Called community development care centers, the schools double as community centers. UNAIDS officials and other health experts now consider this holistic, low-cost strategy one of the most effective starting points for battling the AIDS crisis.
The partnership, forged last year, is ideal, observes Pat Draper, Rotarian chair of Soul of Africa and a member of the Rotary Club of Hillcrest. The Rotarians needed money to build the schools because Rotary Foundation Matching Grants don't cover capital costs. And the footwear companies quickly realized they needed an organization they could trust to disburse funds they'd raised earlier, after Lance Clark visited an AIDS orphanage in Durban in 2003.
To date, Soul of Africa has committed more than US$275,000 from footwear industry donations and sales of hand-stitched shoes imprinted with an AIDS ribbon on the sole. The group's board of trustees, which includes Draper, has agreed to build at least four schools. The Rotarians now support 25 schools, including 17 equipped through Matching Grants with Canadian Rotarians, led by the Rotary Club of Kitchener, Ont.
Rotarian Ndlovu directs 62 local preschools. Only 15 are in decent condition, he says. The rest "are in a devastating state because the community is doing this out of their own pockets."
The model for Soul of Africa's approach is a community outreach effort supported by the Rotary clubs of Inchanga-A1000 Hills and Hillcrest and the nonprofit Thousand Hills Community Helpers. Every week, about 200 women and children come to a local church for a free hot meal. The women also receive vocational training here, and a volunteer Rotarian doctor, Bob Mickel, runs a health clinic for the children, including Mzwandile and his baby niece.
Another boy, Xolani, 11, who has cared for his four younger siblings since their parents died a few years ago, walked for several hours to get here. As he waits to see Mickel, he puts a protective arm around his two sisters.
"We just want to see that the children have at least one meal a week," says Dawn Leppan, who runs the community group. "I've been to homes where four to five of them are sitting and having warm water for supper." With funding from a Matching Grant, the effort will soon run seven days a week.
Wounded nation
South Africa has come a long way since Nelson Mandela was elected president of the new democracy in 1994. The nation, Africa's wealthiest, serves as beacon to the entire continent, with a stable democracy and a growing middle class. But AIDS threatens to undermine its progress.
There are many reasons behind the epidemic's harsh grip on South Africa: the legacy of apartheid, access to antiretroviral drugs, widespread denial, a tradition of polygamy, a high rate of child rape and child brides, government apathy, the prevalence of diseases like tuberculosis and malaria that weaken the immune system. But above all, there's poverty.
Mzwandile still lives in a Fourth World village. Just a short drive away, though, there's a gated shopping center where you can sip lattes under brightly colored umbrellas.
When the scope of the epidemic first emerged, Rotarians threw their energies into orphanages. But slowly they realized they needed a strategy to reach more children. "There are just too many AIDS orphans," Draper says. "I've seen a number of children over the years who've died," he adds. "One girl I knew probably got infected at 13. Within a year, she had died. And I'd known her as a little girl of four. That's pretty heartbreaking to see."
At Sicelekuhle preschool, which Draper frequently visits, the children flock to his side, some peering shyly up at him, others flinging their arms around him. The school, whose name means "beautiful," is a squat, concrete building set into the township's steep hillside and surrounded by coils of barbed wire. Inside, the paint is peeling, and the ceiling is falling apart. But the director, May Nzama, who opened the school in her own home in 1999 and pays for meals out of her pension, keeps the rooms clean and orderly, posting hand-lettered signs marking the "fantasy area" and "block area."
"I started the school because I was feeling sorry for the children," she says. "The children are just left with their grannies, and the grannies cannot take care of them all." She now watches over about 60 students. Many are HIV-positive and live in child-headed households. Most come from families who can't afford tuition, so Nzama digs deeper into her meager pension.
New toys and tables in shiny primary colors, donated by Rotarians, fill the main room. On this day in early April, the Hillcrest Rotarians are holding a small party for the children, and they've also brought supplies, including sleeping mats.
Within the year, the children will attend a brand-new community development care center, equipped through Rotarian donations and a Matching Grant and constructed with funds from Soul of Africa's shoe sales. The partners will also soon build a new preschool near Mzwandile's home. His niece will attend, and he'll return to class. Then, perhaps he'll get his simple wish: "When I grow up," he says, "I want to get work so that I can build a home and live with my family."
Taking action
Soul of Africa works closely with Rotarians for Fighting AIDS. For information about this Rotarian Action Group and its projects, including Soul of Africa, Orphan Rescue, and ANCHOR (the Africa Partnership for Children Orphaned and at Risk), go to www.rffa.org.
If you wish to get involved with the Soul of Africa project then click here.
