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SOUTH AFRICA: Thembi Maboyana: "Most people were dying alone in the shacks"
25 Aug 2008 16:20:47 GMT
 Source: IRIN

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RUSTENBERG, 25 August 2008 (IRIN) - Thembi Maboyana is a home-based caregiver who works for a community-based HIV/AIDS programme called Tapologo in Rustenberg, in South Africa's North West Province. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about life in Freedom Park, an informal settlement that has sprung up next to one of the area's platinum mines.

"I came to Freedom Park in 1990 from Vosloorus [a township east of Johannesburg] because my brother is working here [at the mine]. I was selling some fruits and vegetables to the shacks and my brother was also supporting me. It was difficult before we got an RDP [government low-cost] house. In the shack there's no water, no toilet, no roads, and it's worse when it's raining.

"Here we are mixed - we've got legal and illegal peoples from Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, and those without South African IDs [identity documents] can't get RDP houses or disability grants.

"I think the others, they haven't got family at home [to support them] so they find a friend and they say, 'Let's go to Rustenberg, we're going to work'. They come here thinking that they're going to get a job, but there's no jobs.

"Others don't have money to [buy stock so they can] sell something, so they get four to five boyfriends to get money to buy water, paraffin and clothes, and to go back to home [in the rural areas] for big days [holidays].

"The main problem is that when you've got a boyfriend, that boyfriend is not your husband because he has a wife at home, so when you get ill, he just runs away and leaves you in the shack.

"I found out I was positive in 1998, when I had TB [tuberculosis]. I was angry, guilty, shocked, feeling alone. All of my family knows, but I waited three years to tell them.

"Tapologo [a community-centred HIV/AIDS programme run by the Catholic Church] was wanting some caregivers so I joined because I wanted knowledge about HIV and AIDS, and I saw most people here in Freedom Park were dying alone in the shacks. I decided to volunteer because I was thinking about me - what is going to happen to me? Who's going to look after me?

"Most of my patients are women. Most of the men, they don't believe about HIV and AIDS, they just think they've been bewitched by the witch doctors and they don't want to use condoms.

"Our patients are afraid to disclose to their boyfriends because they're afraid the boyfriend will run away; so they continue to spread the virus.

"When we find a patient is living alone, we bathe the patient, we cook porridge for them if they can't do it, and we clean the house. If there's no water in the house, we buy it for them.

"If the patient has a family, we teach the family how to give the patient treatment and we educate them about reactions to the medication. Most of my patients recover and say, 'No more Rustenberg, we are going home'."

ks/he

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org


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