In AIDS' wake, new family

The Monitor starts an occasional series on two families who reached out to AIDS orphans.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer

from the September 26, 2007 edition

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Tshipesong Township, South Africa - Until May 2005, Olga Thimbela's life was unremarkable. Like many housekeepers, she earned about 700 rand a month ($100), enough to buy groceries and clothes for her two young children and to support herself and her husband, Pontsho.

But on May 26, 2005, Olga's sister Nono – a mother of four – died of AIDS. Since there were no other relatives to take in Nono's children, Olga took them in herself, and her family doubled overnight. In June 2006, Olga's family grew again, when Olga's aunt – a mother of two – also died of AIDS.

Hundreds of thousands of families in South Africa have faced both the grief of losing relatives to AIDS and the daily demands of looking after those they leave behind. South Africa has more children orphaned by AIDS than any other country in the world, with some 2 million South Africans having died of AIDS, and 5.4 million living with HIV, according to UNAIDS. Demographers describe South Africa's population as an hourglass, with a large number of elderly on one end and a large number of children and youths at the other end. In the skinny middle are a diminishing number of young adults, who are dying at the rate of 1,000 a day from AIDS.

It is the loss of the most productive citizens – 71 percent of deaths among adults ages 15 to 49 are caused by AIDS – that could sap the energy of a young nation of some 47 million and an entire generation at a time when both should be coming into their own.

"I do a lot of stuff for my kids and my sister's kids because I didn't want to see these kids to go to eat in the dustbin or to go to steal," says Olga, her soft voice breaking into sobs in the bedroom she shares with Pontsho and her youngest son, Bokamoso. "Life is too difficult."

"I don't have a family now because of AIDS," she adds, gaining composure. "My sister is gone; it's AIDS. My auntie is gone; it's AIDS. That's why I took these kids to stay with me also. But I don't mind everything, I'm happy. I always say that God will help us one day."

The burden for this looming population crisis falls primarily on the shoulders of the black and poor majority. But South Africa's black communities have at least one cultural resource to fall back on: the traditional African concept of ubuntu.

It's an obligation many Africans describe as automatic – as natural as offering water to a guest or a seat on the bus to an elderly person. Stanlake Samkange, the late African nationalist and journalist from Zimbabwe, said that among other things, ubuntu "means that if and when one is faced with a decisive choice between wealth and the preservation of the life of another human being, then one should opt for the preservation of life." But while ubuntu means that some of South Africa's most vulnerable citizens will have someone to look after them, it also means that families like Olga's stretch themselves to the limit.

Olga "is still very physically active, she can go out and find employment," says Sibongile Mpofu, the social worker who helped Olga get custody of her sister's children. But other South Africans, particularly the elderly, are not so fortunate.

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18-year-old foster son Thabang (l.) and his siblings study. Olga and Pontsho are saving so the kids can pursue their education. 'I don't want these kids to grow up without education,' says Olga. Melanie Stetson Freeman - staff A young family suddenly grows