Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - November 16, 2001
Jaspreet Kindra

This week he wrote to Mbeki inviting him to take the trip to "bring hope to these people" who are living in what Jokweni describes as a state of emergency. Jokweni lives in the seaside town of Umgababa. He does voluntary work for the HIV/Aids activist group Treatment Action Campaign, having got involved in social work since his days at school. He spends and does not earn, jokes Jokweni. He says his parents are still awaiting the fruits of his endeavour.

The Mail & Guardian went with Jokweni on a tour of one of the rural areas, Nyavwini, almost 200km south of Durban. Jokweni is accompanied by the community "Gogo", Victoria Mngoma, and the ward councillor for the area, the African National Congress's Mana Ngcobo.

Past Umzinto, down the dirt track we go. For many help lies well beyond 30km; we travelled a 40km stretch of dirt track and still had another 30km to go to the closest hospital. Ngcobo points out that a one-way trip on a kombi from the main road to Nyavwini costs R20.

As we make our way down the mud track, which winds around the little villages comprising mud huts built on platforms carved on hill slopes, Ngcobo points out the homes of people living with Aids or those who have lost their lives to the disease.

The councillor says she is angry with Mbeki's questioning stance on the causal link between HIV and Aids. She has to contend with the issue every day: "We now bury people on weekdays as well."

For her, Aids is a reality and as she translates a fiery speech from the owner of the local general store, Mziwempi Mchunu, you know that she has a tough job on her hands.

Mchunu says: "We only hear about the anti-retroviral, about the disease through the radio. We have never seen anything here. There is no clinic. People get the disease, they don't talk about it. But we all know what they are suffering from."

But parents such as Zachias and Khwezaphi Gumbi talk, sitting on seats made of tree stumps outside their mud huts. They lost their 28-year-old daughter, their son-in-law and their four-month-old grandson within a year to Aids. Their grandson was the first to die last year. When their son-in-law, who was a truck driver, fell ill earlier this year and their daughter began losing weight, Zachias Gumbi say, they knew.

But confrontation led to a spate of denials from the son-in-law's parents, until he himself admitted that he had contracted the virus.

Gumbi says: "People do not like to admit they have got the disease because it is embarrassing for the family - it brings dishonour - as you are admitting that you have been sleeping around."

After their son-in-law died, their daughter was gone a month later, say the Gumbis, their voices devoid of any emotion.

Ntombizonkhe Magoso (29) lies wasted on a bed in a mud hut atop a hill. Dogs, cats and children play around the house, while her grandmother watches her, in the knowledge that her granddaughter is caught in throes of a deadly disease.

Magoso, who worked as a car cleaner in Durban until early this year, was "dumped" at her grandmother's doorstep by her mother, who could not handle the stigma.

As she bites into an apricot, Magoso talks about her days of torment in Umlazi, outside Durban, with her four brothers - all in their 20s - who taunted her after she found out that she had contracted the virus.

"What can you do to help me?" she asks. Her body is burning with fever. It is a long way to the hospital. Grandmother Dumazile Magoso does not have the money or the physical strength to carry her down the hill to the dirt track. We offer our prayers and a bit of cash and move on.

And Jokweni sits down to write his letter, convinced that Mbeki will listen.

Contacts

- The Ark Christian Ministries Shelter, Durban: Tel: (031) 33 29 614

- South Coast Hospice, Port Shepstone: Tel: (039) 682 3031

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