Sunday Times, South Africa - Sunday, September 6, 1998
Dina Seeger

She has not become their guardian by choice: AIDS has killed her parents and aunt.

In the past three years the HIV virus has reached into hundreds of homes in the sprawling rural community of Izingolweni near Port Shepstone in southern KwaZulu-Natal.

At the nearby Murchison Hospital half of the patients whose blood is tested are HIV positive.

While it is well documented that northern KwaZulu-Natal is the most HIV-ravaged part of the country, it is little known that Izingolweni has virtually become a village of orphans - and a place where migrant workers come home to die.

There are few jobs for the thousands who live in small huts on Izingolweni's rolling hills. Most adults are forced to leave their families behind and head for Johannesburg or Durban in search of work, says South Coast Hospice community worker Judy Ndaba.

"Many of them only come home to be taken care of by their families until they die of AIDS," she says.

Precious's mother, Ntomfuthi Gambushe, and her father, Agrippa Mkhize, went to Durban to work more than four years ago, leaving their five daughters in the care of Ntomfuthi's mother, Mercy Gambushe.

Ntomfuthi returned home in May this year, rail thin and weary. Her common law husband, Mkhize, was already dead.

"When my mother came home she was very sick," says Precious. "But she was only sick for one month before she died."

Ntomfuthi's sister, Mildred, also returned home from Durban two years ago, her body ravaged by AIDS.

Mildred died last February leaving behind six children.

Precious says she does not know whether her other aunt, Sibongile, is dead or alive. Sibongile, whose four children are also in Precious's care, went to Durban nearly three years ago and the family has not seen or heard from her since.

"She might have died already or maybe she will come home like my aunt and mother did," says Precious.

The children's grandmother, Mercy Gambushe, who is crippled with arthritis, uses her pension of R490 a month to pay for school fees and food for herself and the 15 grandchildren.

Despite her hard life, Precious takes her education seriously.

"I would like to be a nurse one day so I can help people who are sick," she says tearfully.

There are literally hundreds of tragic AIDS stories in Izingolweni.

Ndaba spends her days taking food and medicine to approximately 300 HIV and AIDS patients who are on the South Coast Hospice's community-based AIDS programme. And their numbers are increasing with terrifying speed.

Although 20 AIDS victims die each week in the area, Ndaba says at least 30 new HIV patients are added to their programme every week.

"We counsel people at local hospitals before their blood is taken. If they are positive we automatically put them on the programme," she says.

"Many people go to Durban to work because there are not enough jobs in Port Shepstone.

"They come back when they are dying."

She describes how one of her most recent HIV patients came home from Durban to be taken care of by his family.

"He is very sick but when his family found out that he had HIV they rejected him and now they refuse to give him food or take care of him."

Ndaba, who takes him food and painkillers, is his last remaining link with the living.

In a nearby house Esther , who is dying of AIDS in secret, says her husband moved into his girlfriend's house when she told him she was HIV positive.

"I know my husband gave me the disease but he refuses to take a blood test. He says he is clean," she says.

Esther's strength left her last month and she knows the virus, which she discovered she had two years ago, has finally become AIDS.

"If my neighbours learn that I am dying then they will stop giving me food. That is why I will not tell them," says Esther.

She says her two babies, Sphumele, 2, and Bongiwe, 1, are also sick. Although they are thin and covered in sores, the two children still bubble with laughter as they play with stones on the ground.

Esther has not taken them for a blood test yet but she says she knows they will also die.

Dr Bill Hardy of Murchison Hospital says he believes the virus has hit the southern KwaZulu-Natal region harder than anywhere else in the country.

The wards' floors are littered with mattresses on which AIDS patients in their final days lie ill and dying. Hardy says half of the 70 to 80 people whose blood is taken each month at Murchison test positive.

"The hospital has 300 beds, but we are always 120 percent full as patients with AIDS-related diseases occupy the beds for a long time."

Ironically, the small church graveyards in Izingolweni are almost empty, with the victims of AIDS being quietly buried on their family plots to avoid the social stigma of the disease. and only those who are lucky enough to die of old age, accidents or political violence are given the final privilege of a proper burial in a graveyard.

Because AIDS is kept secret in Izingolweni, families do not bury their loved ones in the cemetery for fear that neighbours will ask questions about their death.

As in many family plots in Izingolweni, Precious's mother and aunt lie side by side buried in their garden - waiting for their sister to come home.
980906
ST980901

Copyright ©1980, 1998. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .