Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - March 26, 2006
Rowan Philp

But last week it earned her a spontaneous standing ovation in the White House.

And this, after hugging and hanging out with US First Lady Laura Bush in her private suite - discussing furniture, township T-shirts and men.

Sitshaka, 31, led a group of six "mentor mothers" from the Western Cape on a week-long visit to the White House and other US agencies. This followed Bush's tour in July last year of the maternity clinic where Sitshaka works in Khayelitsha.

Sitshaka is a co-ordinator with the Cape Town-based "Mothers 2 Mothers" programme, which employs 200 HIV-positive mothers across the country to support and educate HIV-positive pregnant women with the goal of preventing the transmission of the virus to their babies.

"We call [Laura Bush] our grandmother now - but last week I informed her that she was now also officially a member of staff!" said Sitshaka.

"The security [at the White House] was crazy; so very strict - but, I tell you, we suddenly felt very at home when we saw that all the security badges worn by the White House staff members are hung from these beaded [lanyards] made by our ladies, here in Khayelitsha!"

Bush's daughter, Barbara Bush, became a supporter of the programme while working as a volunteer at the Red Cross Children's Hospital in Cape Town last year.

Last week she sat in to listen to Sitshaka speak in the historic East Room, where an audience of 200 people, including the heads of Unicef and pharmaceutical companies Merck and Pfizer, heard how the programme supported 11000 pregnant women with HIV in Southern Africa.

It was Sitshaka's final story which brought the world's most famous house down. Having risked the same thing herself, Sitshaka told how she had convinced a pregnant woman, "Thoko", to disclose her HIV status to her mother, two sisters and two brothers, all at once. "Thoko was terrified and, to be honest, I was also afraid - there was a silence after she told them, and we did not know how they would react."

But her brother "walked over and hugged her and said: 'Sisi, I'm also HIV-positive, but I did not know how to tell mother and all of you guys.'" One by one, all of her brothers and sisters did the same: they were all HIV-positive, but had not sought treatment or advice.

Sitshaka said she spent three hours in that Khayelitsha lounge, drawing up a lifestyle and medication plan for the entire family - and reassuring Thoko's distraught mother: "You will not have to bury these children, now that they have decided to get help."

Sitshaka told the Sunday Times: "I wasn't watching the First Lady, because she knew the story, but all these other people, they were quite emotional at that. One African-American woman came to me afterwards, and said she had never revealed her HIV status to her family, even though her husband died of Aids 10 years ago. She said: 'You have inspired me to go and tell my family.' I was so happy for her."

Dr Mitch Besser, the US gynaecologist who founded Mothers 2 Mothers, said: "The First Lady has a real appreciation of the enormous difference these women are making. Hey, I think it's pretty unusual for a First Lady to invite people upstairs to her private rooms, but there's a real bond between her and these mothers."

Said Bush: "In 2002 [Babalwa] was married and pregnant with her second child when she learned that she was HIV positive. She learned how to manage her HIV infection ... and also managed to have a beautiful, healthy baby who is HIV-negative. Today she uses her experience to help change the lives of HIV-positive mothers-to-be who seek comfort and courage during their pregnancies."

Sitshaka told Bush that she did not blame her husband for her infection and taught other women to "forget blame". "Men can learn [to be responsible] but men are still men; we women are grown-ups and we chose them," she chuckled.

060326
ST060309