Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - October 31, 2005
Thabo Mohlala

By providing free transport, meals and classrooms with electricity, these schools are keeping poor learners in class and motivating them to complete an education that might liberate them from poverty.

Many rural children face serious social problems that force them to leave school prematurely. Chief among these is the grinding poverty caused by unemployment and the ravaging effects of illness.

In many rural towns and villages, children are heading their households. Not only are they burdened with adult responsibilities at a very young age, but they are also exposed to physical and sexual abuse, and hard labour.

A report released in Johannesburg last month by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the neglect of children affected by HIV/Aids in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda bears this out.

Titled Letting Them Fail: Government Neglect and the Right to Education for Children Affected by Aids, the report says these countries are not doing enough to lessen the effects of the pandemic on orphans. It is informed by first-hand testimonies of children who are hard hit by HIV/Aids.

HRW's researcher, Jonathan Cohen, says while some attention is given to HIV/Aids, not enough is being done to focus on its impact on children. He says this neglect leaves many of them with no option but to drop out of school.

"Dropping out of school exposes orphans to a lifelong cycle of poverty and abuse, [and these children] face a high risk of sexual exploitation, hazardous labour and living in the street," says Cohen. "Aidsûaffected children are failing to go to school, and it is because their governments are failing them."

Ntabanhle Primary in Oshoek offers classes from Grade 1 to 7. TV Simelane, a teacher at the school, says most learners come from very poor families. The school was battling to assist them until the Department of Education provided the means for a feeding scheme.

"We are really grateful for this, otherwise we would not have coped. The parents of these children are unemployed and most survive on their grannies' pensions," says Simelane.

She tells of a learner in Grade 6 who lost both his parents. His grandmother (74) has buried seven of her 14 children and is supporting 12 grandchildren on her pension. "Before we provided meals, this child would arrive at school with parched lips and trembling with hunger," says Simelane.

The grandmother spends half her pension on travelling to Germiston to collect her money. "Before I came here, I used to live in Phola Park, Gauteng," she says. She is scared that if she tells Department of Social Services officials that she has moved, it will take months before she receives her pension in Mpumalanga -- and her family will starve.

Litjelembube Secondary School, in Haartebeeskop, also offers additional help for poor children. Its principal, Manzini Hlatshwayo, says many learners live on their own as their parents work far away from their homes. This makes them easy prey to criminals in the community and exposes them to sexual assault and drug abuse. Girls face even greater risks as long-distance trucks pass through the area to the Oshoek border post and the drivers may take advantage of them.

Zodwa Nkosi, a 19-year-old Grade 9 learner at Litjelembube, lives with her younger brother. Her mother died years ago and her father works and lives on a farm. She is most vulnerable, as her mud home is unfenced and isolated, near a busy main road.

Nkosi says her father is "irresponsible and always drunk". "He rarely comes home, let alone gives us money. We quarrel a lot when he is around. I am forced to use the child-support grant I get for my two-year-old kid to buy food, uniforms and school fees," she says. Her child lives with the mother of her boyfriend.

"I wake up at 5am to clean the house, prepare breakfast, take a bath and leave for school. When I get back from school, I do the same household chores, sometimes at the expense of my school work," says Nkosi. But things changed for better after she unburdened her heart to her maths teacher, who was concerned about her performance.

Hlatshwayo says children do not volunteer information, and this makes it difficult for the school to intervene. "We come across this sort of information by accident," he says.

Hamilton Simelane, a natural science and English teacher, says often when learners perform badly, teachers will ask to see their parents. This is when they discover that some learners are orphans, or that their parents do not live with them.

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