Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 19, 2005
Bobby Jordan

'This group of children is still incredibly optimistic about the future. They see their lives as better than their parents' lives'

IT'S A narrow cul-de-sac for such a big gang. Fifteen of them, heavily tattooed, guard a street corner the size of a parking bay. Like a shoal of fish, their eyes move in unison as they watch a white minibus creep into their turf and stop.

Inside the minibus, field worker Meikie Leshomo clutches her handbag with both hands.

"I don't like Eldorado Park," she whispers. Neither does her colleague and driver, Martin Manyike, who winds down his window to address the crowd: "We're looking for Dalin."

Silence from the gang. Slowly they inch forward.

Manyike tries again in Afrikaans: "Ons soek vir Dalin wat hierso woon, hier langsaan."

"Hier is ek [Here I am]," barks a gangly teenager, stepping forward, embarrassed.

Now a few laughs, a few crooked smiles. "Dis jou mense, Dalin [It's your people, Dalin]," the gang teases, contracting back onto their street corner.

"Follow me," Dalin tells the field workers, and leads them into 15 Maine Avenue, Eldorado Park Extension Seven.

After two hours spent in a township maze, Dalin is a welcome relief. He is the first catch of the day, the first of 12 children on today's list for the Birth to Twenty field workers based at Baragwanath and Johannesburg hospitals.

By the end of the year the research team, consisting of several mobile units, will have tracked down close to 2300 teenagers from Pretoria to Vereeniging.

Everyone must be interviewed for more than half an hour. The children will even be weighed and measured later in the year, and receive a birthday card, courtesy of Wits University and the Human Sciences Research Council, the organisations leading the project.

The children are a snapshot of urban South Africa. All born within six weeks of Nelson Mandela's release from Victor Verster Prison in 1990, they comprise the largest and longest research study of its kind in a developing country - a window into the state of the nation, both physical and psychological. They have been dubbed "Mandela's Children".

"It's nothing much," scoffs Dalin, heading back to his gang. "I don't feel special or anything."

In fact Dalin is special, not only to some of South Africa's top doctors and researchers, but also to field workers like Leshomo, who have been following Mandela's Children for 15 years.

The first time Leshomo saw Dalin he hadn't even started school; now he appears to have had enough of school, she remarks as the white minibus reverses past the gang still bristling on the corner.

"Sometimes I cry to see the way people are living," says Leshomo, her heartache palpable. "But here it's not so bad. Westbury is the worst. And if you stay three hours in Orange Farm without being hijacked then you're lucky. We don't go there any more."

At 15 years old, Mandela's Children are far more scattered than the original intake of pregnant women conscripted from antenatal clinics in Johannesburg-Soweto.

The latest stats show that 74% live in Greater Soweto, including the vast majority of the 2568 black children.

Eleven percent (343) live in the "suburbs", including 207 white children. The demographic spread is completed with 383 coloured and 115 Indian children.

Of the children's mothers, a surprisingly high number - 55% - are single.

Originally dubbed "Birth to Ten", the study grew into "Birth to Twenty".

The research value is obvious: in a country still struggling with the "national question" - who is a South African? - Mandela's Children collectively embody the most sensible response.

The study will also answer questions important at a time of a national health crisis: how many young South Africans are HIV-positive? How many are malnourished? How many are obese? Do whites still grow faster than blacks? How many have access to proper sanitation, education, shelter? How many can obtain mind-altering drugs?

There are psychosocial questions, too. Do Mandela's Children have faith in the future? Do all races enjoy equal opportunity? Is South Africa a better place to live now compared with when they were born?

Reflections of this kind have so far produced more than 100 scientific papers as the study gathers pace, now employing more than 50 people.

The results, like all things South African, are mixed. Mandela's Children at 15 are a complex bunch, more interested in Mandoza than Madiba.

Some things have changed. Today's youngsters are more optimistic than before - the latest findings show that 95% consider themselves proudly South African, and 89% see a positive future. This is despite a high level of family fragmentation - only a fifth of the children have direct contact with their biological fathers.

Other things remain unchanged: despite a barrage of safe-sex information, several of the cohort are already pregnant.

HIV/Aids awareness is likely to form a key part of future studies as the cohort moves into the high-risk age group.

About 72% of the original cohort still form part of the study.

Birth to Twenty's co-founder, Professor Linda Richter, executive director of the HSRC Child, Youth and Family Development programme, believes the results so far are extremely encouraging.

"This group of children is still incredibly optimistic about the future. They see their lives as better than their parents' lives. They say 'We don't have apartheid.'"

Richter says the study also shows that self-confidence and family values can outweigh the potentially crushing effect of poverty: "Largely we're studying an economically challenged group of young people. We tend to think that kids that grow up in poor circumstances are faced with impossible challenges. But the study shows the importance of a solid family, one that conveys values and self-belief."

The study also shows a massive gain in education levels.

But the best indicator by far in the scorecard of an adolescent nation - awkward, spotty and self-conscious - is the candid talk in the field workers' minibus that daily burrows deeper beneath Greater Johannesburg.

From Maine Avenue, Manyike steers the Birth to Twenty team west into Daffodil Road, Klipspruit West. The street is sunny; a few toddlers play in their parents' back yards.

Leshomo tells of the daily heroics some mothers perform to keep food on the table. Meeting the families, she says, is a journey into the soul of her people. "I just want to cry so many times," she says.

The minibus moves on, into Eldorado Park Extension Six. A few people wave when they recognise the logo on the side.

Manyike says: "What gets to me is the vast difference we see in one day. In some places we'll find 14 people living in two bedrooms. That afternoon we'll go to the 'suburbs' and find four people living in 10.

"You start to ask yourself questions."

No time for that now as the field workers pile out of the minibus in front of 286/25 Koos Human Road, Eldorado Park Extension Six. They've spotted a 15-year-old, in his school uniform this time. This one even has a dad.

Leshomo steps cheerfully through the front gate. She smiles and ticks her list.

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