When Irene Nkosi took to the stage at a glossy Moms+SocialGood event in New York recently, it was hard to pair the confident woman in a striking, Swazi-inspired dress with her tragic story: “By the age of 16, not really even a woman yet, I was a parent. I was also a victim of rape and my attacker was never jailed,” Nkosi told the stunned audience.
She went on to say how – after the birth of her second child – she was diagnosed with HIV.
“Now I was sure no one loved me – not even God.”
Nkosi, from Bronkhorstspruit, on the border between the Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces in South Africa, said the clinic didn&#8217;t educate her about HIV “or how to prevent my baby from infection”.
<blockquote>“I was heart-broken and frustrated. I feared for my life and the baby I was carrying.”</blockquote>
Hoping for support after sharing her status with family and neighbors, she was instead isolated and called names. Although she gave birth to an HIV-negative baby, it died after being smothered by a blanket. Nkosi believes crèche staff neglected her baby because of her own positive status.
Nkosi’s story took me back to 2005, to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa, where I was researching the challenges faced by HIV-positive, pregnant women for a Media Fellowship on HIV at Wits University’s Journalism School.
The stories those women told were just as heartbreaking.
Most of the women I interviewed were following the correct antiretroviral regimen to prevent HIV transmission to their babies, but for some it was too late. Almost all of them carried the terrible burden of stigma and rejection by their families, partners and communities. Often, they were “outed” after feeding their babies the free government-issue formula milk in its distinctive orange tins to prevent HIV transmission. They would tell elaborate lies to explain why they were not breastfeeding.
“My grandmother forced me to breastfeed. I told her my breasts were dirty, the nipples were cracked. Then I just take a razor blade and then I just cut… and I tell her that there is blood in my breast, it is not good to breastfeed,” one woman told me.
Another I interviewed had been hounded out of the house by her mother and sisters and forced into a shelter. One frightened young mom said she had been too scared to disclose her status at a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal and now had an HIV-positive baby. Several told me that their partners had rejected them and blamed them for “bringing the disease into the house”.
I can only hope that the lives of those women and their children have improved since then. But, more than a decade later, what are the prospects for the HIV-positive women who are pregnant now?
The big picture is hardly rosy, with an estimated seven million South Africans living with HIV (according to 2015 figures). And it is women and young girls who still carry the greatest burden, with HIV prevalence in women almost double that in men, and with the rate of infection in young women aged 15-24 almost four times higher than in males of the same age bracket. Among certain vulnerable groups like sex workers, HIV rates are sometimes as high as 40-88%, according to the Human Sciences Research Council.
But without a doubt, massive strides have been made in putting people who need treatment onto it (now 48% of all those infected in the country are on antiretroviral treatment) and in reducing HIV transmission from mother to child. According to UNAIDS, more than 95% of the country’s pregnant, HIV-positive women are accessing antiretroviral treatment to prevent transmission to their babies.
In 2011, UNAIDS and PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) launched the Global Plan to lower mother-to-child transmission by 90%. After four years, six priority countries – South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and Uganda – had met this target. Mother-to-child transmission rates in South Africa currently stand at 4%. If the rate of infection is under 5%, the UN considers mother-to-child transmission to be virtually eliminated, since 100% elimination cannot be achieved.
Over the years, the guidelines and treatment for HIV-positive mothers and babies have changed too. Now, the World Health Organization recommends that all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers begin lifelong antiretroviral treatment. And in 2011, the South African government phased out supplying free formula milk in public hospitals and clinics. Unless medical conditions dictate otherwise, breastfeeding is now recommended.
But what of the people behind the statistics, people like Nkosi, and the mothers I interviewed? Nkosi says her life changed dramatically when she came into contact with mothers2mothers, an organization that deserves much credit for helping to reduce transmission rates to babies as well as for improving the health and emotional states of HIV-positive mothers. The organization employs HIV-positive Mentor Mothers to help women access treatment and health services for themselves and their families and bring them out of isolation.
When Nkosi signed up as a mentor for mothers2mothers, her confidence grew daily. Now she is happily married to an HIV-positive man and together they have a four-year-old daughter, Nothando, who is HIV-negative. Their status is out in the open and the children compete to give their parents their daily medication, she laughingly tells me later.
Nkosi ended her short, powerful speech with the following words: “(My children) have a mother who they can be proud of, a woman who was once a victim. But now I can strongly say I’m a survivor.”
Stigma, she tells me, is gradually diminishing. “Even though some people still lack knowledge, in the support group sessions we share our challenges and fears, the problems we encounter in our households. We find out how best we can help each other.”
A mothers2mothers press release captures the organization’s simple but highly-effective approach: “The epidemic may be global but the solution is local.” When marginalized HIV-positive mothers are trained to be healthcare workers in understaffed health centers, and paid for their work, they become role models and leaders in their communities.
The results of this formula have been astounding. Studies showed that women who received two or more mothers2mothers visits were seven times more likely to test their babies for HIV at six weeks, than those who only received one visit. Among their clients, the rate of transmission is only 2.1%. A recent external study in Uganda also showed the model to be a huge money saver by avoiding treatment costs.
Launched in Cape Town in 2001 by Dr Mitch Besser, an American gynaecologist and obstetrician who fell in love with South Africa as a high school exchange student and returned to work there, mothers2mothers started out with five Mentor Mothers. Now it services 860,500 women and families in eight sub-Saharan countries and is partnering with both the South African and Kenyan governments.
In South Africa, mothers2mothers had by 2015 reached close to 51,000 HIV-positive women and 27,800 babies exposed to HIV. The organization also offers early childhood services and HIV counseling, testing and sex education for adolescents, through a peer mentorship program.
Robin Smalley, Co-founder and Director of mothers2mothers U.S., explains why the model is so successful. “If you empower women to take control of their health and their families’ health, they’ll move mountains to do this. We give them the tools to succeed and they do. We are not coming in as outsiders and telling them what they should be doing. We give them the information and employment and let them do what comes naturally, which is to support one another and their children.” Mentor mothers are employed for two years before they phase out, and let others take over.
Smalley’s own involvement with mothers2mothers came about when, in a grief-stricken state, she visited Besser after his sister (her close friend), died unexpectedly after minor surgery. Smalley was so taken by the work that Besser was doing in Cape Town, and the invincible spirit of the HIV-positive mothers she encountered, that she immediately persuaded her family to join her there and began working to grow the organization. Years later she moved back to the US to look after her ageing father and to keep building mothers2mothers’ financial base by lobbying US donors.
Since then, she has been working 24/7 to keep up with the organization’s expansion. Although mothers2mothers has had requests from India, Thailand, Haiti and Central American countries to open up branches there, it is staying focused on sub-Saharan Africa, where the need is greatest. &#8211; Written by Philippa Garson

‘No One Loved Me – Not Even God’

<h2>‘The Crisis Could Be With Us For The Unforeseeable Future’</h2>
The tear-inducing image of a young boy washed up on a beach in Turkey last year dominated headlines for weeks. His small, lifeless body had finally presented the true picture of the greatest crisis of our times. His death became a metaphor of the desolation and helplessness faced by the millions forcibly displaced.
The boy was later reported to have been on a boat with his family from his hometown Kobani in northern Syria, a country torn apart by war for years. He was one of 11,000 children reported as displaced every day, the victims of forced migration.
His father would later explain to reporters that their boat suddenly capsized as they were making a final and desperate attempt to escape the conflict-ridden state by sea.
This illustration is but one of many that has continued to grab headlines over the years. The refugee crisis is real and the biggest casualties are children.
Antonio Guterres, the former United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), highlights in the UNHCR Global Trends 2014 report: “We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before.”
Children form an overwhelming majority, at least about half, of the world’s total refugee population upwards of 60 million.
Chaos has long descended on the world but the lack of political will by global leaders is robbing children of their childhood, families and identity.
On a recent visit to Johannesburg, British politician, activist and author, Professor Peter Hain, the Lord Hain of Neath, said the refugee crisis is a calamity for women and children.
“This global phenomenon capitalizes on the shortcomings of states, adequate political standards need to be established in order to create change,” he told FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
While governments are not as willing to initiate processes to mitigate the rising numbers of refugees, particularly children, Amnesty International earlier this year conducted the Refugees Welcome Index; the global survey revealed that government refugee policies and citizens are on opposite ends, with the important call to integrate the refugees into economies.
The fight continues for children, though. They are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation in unfamiliar, often crowded conditions they have no control over.
Mosa Moremi, national child rights and advocacy advisor of SOS Children’s Villages South Africa, tells us processes to integrate children into society are very difficult.
“In my experience, sometimes children are brought into the country by parents who have migrated and then they are later abandoned. They are left with nothing.”
She highlights that giving these abandoned or unaccompanied children adequate care becomes challenging and the system is riddled with layers of red tape.
Professor Hain echoes this sentiment, stating that the crisis which manifests in “a seemingly impotent international system led by the United Nations could be with us for the unforeseeable future”.
It’s no comforting thought that one estimate suggests that 80% of the world’s refugees are in developing countries and yet less than 9% are hosted by six of the world’s richest nations. And, the rise of right-wing populism ideas, as Professor Hain stresses.
This means that many will continue to face racism, xenophobia and discrimination, imposing an unprecedented new burden on children who often have little understanding of the social, political and economic discourse of a society.
In the pages that follow, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA speaks to three young migrants in South Africa, who now live in a limbo, hurt and homeless.
<h2>Sarah (16) and Kudzai (15) Mathe</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32018 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
One night in 2009 when Sarah and Kudzai Mathe, nine and eight respectively, were asleep after another long day selling tomatoes, onions and fruit, their stepfather returned home drunk as he did everyday but this time, he attempted to rape them.
Sarah was able to break free from his grip. She grabbed all her courage, and the money she had saved on the day with Kudzai, and together, they ran, not knowing where they were headed.
As they ran, Kudzai looked back. In the blackness of the night, she could see the house their mother raised them in fade into the distance, never to see it again. The girls had spent their early years with their parents in a small town in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“Our parents got divorced when we were still young. Our stepfather didn’t even hide that he didn’t love us,” they say.
Shortly after their mother’s new union, they stopped attending school.
“He told us he didn’t have money to pay for school fees and that’s when we started selling fruit and vegetables on the street.”
Whilst other children walked to school or waited for the bus in the mornings, Sarah and Kudzai would set up their stall.
“The other kids would laugh at us because we wore rags and sometimes had no shoes.”
Things got worse when their mother fell ill and passed away in 2009.
“There was no longer place for us in that house. Our stepfather just brought in different wives every night and spent most of the money we would make.”
The day after they ran away from home, as they wandered the streets, Kudzai suggested they go to South Africa.
“I heard about it and thought we could get on the bus and just go.”
They arrived at a bus station and spoke with one of the drivers who directed them to the bus that would take them to South Africa.
“When we got onto the bus, the driver asked us how much we had and I pulled out all of our savings and he grabbed it and said we should find seats,” Sarah says.
“We were so hungry and the lady we sat next to on the bus gave us an apple each. We ate them like we’d never eaten before.
“After a few hours, the bus made a stop at Beitbridge; the driver told us to get off and that he would be back for us.”
They waited for the bus driver for two weeks. He didn’t come back for them. And they were only nine and eight years old.
When it dawned on them that the bus driver was not going to be back for them, they found work handing out flyers to travelers passing by the border bridge. They were paid R30 ($2) each a week and saved that up to pay malaicha, which Sarah explains means carriers. The malaicha would help them get to South Africa.
“We paid the R200 ($15) we’d saved and we were on our way.”
With Sarah and Kudzai were five other men.
“As we walked through the forest and then the Limpopo river, what scared us the most was that any one of the men could rape us, we were the only girls and the night our father almost raped us was fresh in our memory,” recalls Sarah.
Kudzai does not say much apart from a nod or a sigh throughout the interview. But she says now: “We really thought South Africa was so far.”
After over 12 hours of walking, they found themselves in Messina, the northernmost town of Limpopo.
“We looked for work but no one would hire us.”
In time, they found an old woman who paid them R50 ($3.6) a month to clean and do the laundry. “It wasn’t that hard for us because we were used to working.”
They used the money to pay for a lorry ride to Johannesburg in September 2009. They were two of the lucky ones. When they got to Johannesburg, they were directed to the Methodist church in Braamfontein. They have since been moved and “life is good”.
“We are back in school and I love maths but I’m not that good at it,” Kudzai giggles.
“We also have each other and that’s what matters,” says Sarah, her smile brightening up a face hardened by experience.
<h2>Maqhawe Garikayi (17)</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32019 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
When Maqhawe Garikayi was arrested by border security for attempting to illegally cross over into South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2012, he was not discouraged. Shortly after he was released, he tried again, and succeeded. He was 13.
Four years on, Garikayi barely looks up as he tells his story.
“I never knew my birth mother and I don’t know if I have any siblings. All I had was a stepmother who saw me as her worker, not her child. She just didn’t love me.”
Garikayi couldn’t get along with his her. At the age of 13, he was questioning his existence and toying with the idea of running away from home. Thoughts of where he would run away to and how he would survive were secondary as survival instincts compelled him to get away from what he describes “a toxic environment”.
As a young boy who was not attending school and knew no stability, he was left with little choice.
“I left home with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. I had no money. I had no documents. I heard about South Africa and how it was the land of milk and honey so that was where I was going to go.”
The second time he tried to cross the border illegally, he was able to sneak past security.
“After [hitch-hiking], I walked through a forest and then through the forceful waves of the Limpopo river. I just followed other groups of people I assumed were also on their way to South Africa.”
Trouble awaited young boys like Garikayi in Messina, where he was robbed of his clothes, and beaten. He had to cover his nudity with a discarded blue overall he found.
“I cried, I thought I was going to die.”
Garikayi mustered strength and made his way to a filling station in Messina. He spent the night there and the following morning, wandered into a suburb and knocked on doors for food and some clothes. Eventually, he was handed a pair of blue shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. After a few days, he was able to make his way to Johannesburg, in a pick-up truck.
Garikayi remembers spending almost eight months on the streets, surviving on whatever he could find in trash bins.
“It was funny the way I always found KFC in the bins, a lot of people wasted that,” he says with a hint of a smile.
Garikayi has since been taken in by an organization that is currently sending him to school, clothing him, feeding him and ensuring he has a warm bed to sleep in every night.
His dreams of being an accountant and having a family of his own have a fighting chance but he sobs and whispers: “My greatest wish is for a mother, I don’t know why God gave me this life.”
&nbsp;
<h2>Wasithanda Hadziperidzega (21)</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32020 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="(max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
On April 28, 2014, Wasithanda Hadziperidzega decided to leave home in pursuit of a better life, a life he thought he would find in South Africa.
But sadly, the journey and destination were a far cry from his dreams.
Originally from Ghana, Hadziperidzega moved to Zimbabwe to live with his mother, a single parent raising four young children, a common scenario in the African narrative.
His mother worked in the public sector and could not afford a decent living.
Many, if not all public service employees, were left for weeks and even months at a time without income, left to live at the mercy of a government mired in turmoil.
“My mother would never tell us that she was struggling financially but I could see; I can see things.”
One day, at the age of 18, Hadziperidzega left home as he did every day for soccer practice. After the game, he listened to his peers talk about how tough life was in Zimbabwe.
He made up his mind.
“… The grounds [were] the only place we could talk about the country’s situation and Mugabe. It was safe. After we talked, I decided then that I was going to leave. All I needed was $53 for a passport and $30 for the bus,” says Hadziperidzega.
He never returned home.
Hadziperidzega remembers it took him no longer than five minutes to decide his new fate. The task was now to make the money.
He had heard about how he could collect a small fortune in Mashonaland West, another province in Zimbabwe. The opportunity presented itself in the form of an illegal gold mining job. The word out on the street was that it was lucrative. After months of struggling to infiltrate a mine called Toppers, he was finally in.
“All I needed was a hammer, a short chisel and that torch you put around your head; it’s dark in those mines, there’s no sun,” he laughs, but there’s pain in his eyes.
After months of hard and treacherous work in the depths of Zimbabwe’s gold pits, he was able to save up $120.
He applied for his passport and used the rest to buy a bus ticket to South Africa.
“I arrived in South Africa at around 11PM at Park Station. Have you ever been to Park Station?” he asks. “There is a huge waiting area and I just sat there and pretended to be waiting for someone.”
People came and went fetching their relatives who had come through from different parts of the continent but no one came for Hadziperidzega. And it was the dead of night.
He hides his sorrow with a nervous chuckle, saying: “I knew no one was coming for me but I was just being silly and hoped someone would fetch me but I knew no one, I didn’t even understand where I was, all I knew was that I was in South Africa.”
For days, Hadziperidzega wandered the streets of Johannesburg looking for some validation that he had found in South Africa the social and economic salvation he couldn’t find in his home country, anything to convince him that he had made the right decision.
All he would encounter were other young foreigners collecting rubbish, “looking horrible”.
Nothing was easy to come by, not even scraps of food.
“I would eat anything just to make my tummy happy but not my tongue,” he shrugs.
Over the past two years, he has moved jobs trying to earn a decent living.
He says he has survived police harassment and several death threats because of his nationality.
But Hadziperidzega has not stopped dreaming.
His mind in still in the football fields of Zimbabwe; and he hopes to one day become a soccer star.
“I definitely don’t want to further my education, my whole family is educated and look at them, they are all poor and they will die poor. When you have money everything is easy and that’s all I want,” he says in conclusion.

refugee-child-015

A Lonely  Planet For The  Child  Refugee

There are 65.3 million displaced people worldwide. Of those people, 21.3 million are refugees, the people who belong to – Nowhere. No one knows where they come from, no one knows where they’re going. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has highlighted that: “We are facing the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time.” He has called it a crisis of solidarity.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) Global Trends report shows that since 2003, the number of newly-displaced people per minute has increased from just fewer than 10 to 24 persons in 2015. In 2014, the number was at its highest – 30. The reasons for displacement differ. Increasingly, the main reason is fleeing the source of political or economic conflict. It then becomes difficult to imagine the uncertain reality the many have run to or are left to live through. In theory, international law defines and protects refugees, encouraging the initiation of asylum procedures once they enter a new environment. In reality, the many who have migrated become nomads, often pursuing what becomes a hollow quest for a better life.
Women and girls form around 50% of refugees or displaced people around the world, according to UNHCR. In Africa, the number of women uprooted by war and unrest is significantly higher. A study published by Hivos International recorded 80% of refugees in Lebanon were women and children.
Along the inner streets of Johannesburg are ‘foreigners’, women selling fruit, vegetables and sundry items to feed their hungry children and themselves. Whilst walking up to the Department of Social Development, two young female hawkers run past me, clutching towels in one hand and tacky sunglasses and cellphone pouches on the other, fleeing cops. As is the case with hundreds of immigrants, they have no papers.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-31973 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2016/08/Refugee-mom-bw-038-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="681" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Refugee-mom-bw-038-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Refugee-mom-bw-038-300x199.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Refugee-mom-bw-038-600x399.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Refugee-mom-bw-038-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Refugee-mom-bw-038.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
Another, a lady, sits rubbing her pregnant belly beside a small stall on Eloff Street. She sells hats, wallets, purses and scarves. She is reluctant to talk and asks not to be named. She came to South Africa following her husband, escaping the political turmoil in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“I came after he had made his way to what we were calling the land of milk and honey… [but] when I arrived in South Africa, it was made known to me that he had left for Canada. I’d come for nothing.”
Abandoned, she was forced to join the informal trading business.
“Life is hard here. We as foreigners are just not free. People don’t respect us and just steal our stock,” she says with little emotion.
After matriculation, she had gone on to acquire a degree in management in the DRC. But today, she is battered and broke.
Often, along their treacherous journeys, the women are abused and mishandled by gangs, truck-drivers and cops. This is only the beginning of their travails. The constitutional guarantees cannot protect them from the injustices they face. The UNHCR has highlighted that life for a woman, beyond her country of origin, becomes a constant battle and one of constant fear and uncertainty.
One of the many dangers is the xenophobic attacks, as has happened in recent times, with South Africans accusing foreign nationals of taking their jobs and over-populating their areas.
The informal trading sector is the main space in which the hateful disputes unravel. But for foreign nationals who have no other hope, informal trading becomes the only option.
Vanya Gastrow, a PhD candidate currently doing research for the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), says one of the biggest challenges faced by foreign traders who come to South Africa is the crime targeted at them.
Other challenges include lack of access to reliable documentation, says Gastrow. “Asylum seekers and refugee permits often don’t meet documentation requirements for banks, visa offices, and landlords,” she says, as such foreigners cannot open bank accounts or access loans.
“These permits also require frequent renewals and so many make the decision to just live without them.”
For women though, it is even worse.
“It’s the sexual violence… and extortion, specific dangers that authorities fail to understand,” according to Penny Foley, a volunteer from Australia currently living in South Africa. She highlights that the objectification of female refugees is one of the many symptoms of what has become the de-humanizing of forced migration.
“The global community needs to change the 20th century understanding of a nation-state and move away from the notion of isolated nationalities,” she says.
“Interestingly though, the problem is not just about changing the perception of what nationals think of foreign nationals, relations amongst refugees need to be established. The fight becomes harder if unity lacks amongst them.”
In the pages that follow, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA speaks to three women from Zimbabwe; what displacement has done to them.
&nbsp;
<h3>Tafadzwa Shumba</h3>
“I just stood at the border in my pink shirt and panties after I had crossed over. I had nothing and I was scared.”
*Tafadzwa Shumba is 42 and came to South Africa in 2008. She was forced to leave her country, Zimbabwe, because of the political instability that made life for her and her family unbearable.
“I was seen to be too neutral so they threatened my parents and tried to kill me for not engaging in their dirty politics.”
The choice to leave was not an easy one to make but as she recalls, “I literally had to take that leap of faith”.
On July 27, 2008, as the world slumped to a financial crisis, Shumba packed a portable bag. She had R300 ($21) that would pay the ‘Guma-Gumas’, a group of men said to assist escapees across the woods to the border.
“I had a passport but those days we were using visas and they were expensive so my only choice was to cross over illegally.” She was the only woman amongst seven guys.
The group began the three-day trek through the forests, the Limpopo River, eventually reaching the border.
Few survive the trek but Shumba’s determination carried her.
“I don’t forget, as we walked through the forest we saw dead bodies. There was a human head lying on the ground with dreadlocks like mine,” says Shumba, running her fingers through her own.
“The Guma-Gumas picked it up and pointed it at us and said if you don’t give us your money you will end up like this head.”
“They took everything, even my pants and left me with there in my pink shirt, panties and shoes.” There was no time to process the betrayal. The trek had to continue.
“Look at me,” she says, as she gestures to her body. “I am nothing. I was a nurse, we would wear crisp white uniforms and after work, I had a home to go to.”
Last year, she was involved in a road accident in South Africa that left her crippled.
“I could not even get compensation from the Road Accident Fund because I am a foreigner.”
Now, because of her disability, she cannot work so she takes care of children and sells fruit and vegetables when desperate for money. The future is uncertain but she takes “each day as it comes”.
&nbsp;
<h3>Refugees Seen As ‘The Other’</h3>
<h5>The travails of a Vietnamese immigrant</h5>
Lisa Phung, her mother and older sister hid in a mosquito and disease-infested swamp during the day and in the night were led on to a small vessel that took them to a main fishing boat which would eventually transport them to their new lives.
Earlier, Phung’s mother had received instruction from her father to leave Vietnam as their freedom was under threat. He was a pilot who had just been captured by communist soldiers in the Vietnam War. Her mother who was not educated enough for a stable job heeded her husband’s advice and managed to secure the money to get her and her girls out of war-torn South Vietnam.
“People smugglers” were paid to get them out.
“The first two times, we got caught and were jailed,” says Phung. The third time, they got lucky.
“En route to the fishing boat, we got robbed by the people smugglers and everything was taken except for a few pieces of food.”
But at least they got on to the big boat.
“We were crammed up like anything and I was one of the youngest at age four.”
Shortly after they started, the boat’s engine died.
“They thought it was a petrol problem but the people smugglers had taken the petrol and replaced the tank with water.”
The group of people floated for 10 days with nothing more than a packet of rice to sustain them.
“My mother remembers that I was starting to die… everyone was getting ready for death.”
Shortly before a storm, a British cargo ship sailed past and for a few moments, there was a ray of hope.
“It didn’t stop to save us and that was heart-breaking because we lost hope.”
It was as though their fate was sealed but then, in a surprise move, the ship turned around and carried the refugees, Phung and her family amongst them, to Singapore.
“After the ordeal, my mum told me she lost hope in a lot of human beings because everyone just looked out for themselves.”
Because Phung’s mother had children, she was the last to be rescued.
“She was the last person off that boat; it must have been horrifying for her.”
The ship docked in Singapore. From there, the refugees were taken to a detention center in Hong Kong where they stayed for three years.
“My mum wanted to go to the USA but they were no longer taking refugees.”
Sometime later, Australia was accepting refugees. Phung was seven years old and finally a life of stability awaited her.
Years have passed. She now lives in Australia with a family of her own and uses her experience to give hope to others who have walked her path.
“I’ve seen how refugees are seen as ‘the other’ in different parts of the world, coming to take their jobs or their land and they really just want a safe place to live and everyone should have that right.”
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<h3>Tapiwa Moyo</h3>
“Coming to South Africa was supposed to be like going to heaven,” says *Tapiwa Moyo, who is 22 years old and from Zimbabwe. When her mother, her only caregiver, left her and her younger sister to find work in Johannesburg, she did not anticipate the hardship.
“At one stage we went without food for almost a week and we had to start selling my mother’s belongings to get some money to buy some maize meal.”
Moyo’s mother saw South Africa as the place where she could try and build a better life for her children.
“The deal was that she would work for a few months, save the money and get us passports and visas to move to South Africa,” says Moyo.
Months passed and then they turned into years. When their supply of cash and food ran dry, Moyo, as the older sister, still in her early teens, was forced to work menial jobs washing clothes, selling nuts and chips and eventually having to part with all their worldly possessions to survive.
“I would see other children playing with teddy bears and Barbie dolls or walking in the streets with their mothers and I would just cry because that’s all I wanted to do,” she weeps.
She was 15 when she received word that her mother had finally made enough money to bring her and her sister to South Africa.
They had waited seven years.
“When I finally got my passport, it was like my prayers were finally answered.”
The bus ride was one filled with excitement.
“It was a 12-hour ride but I couldn’t even sleep. My life was about to change.”
She recalls the moment she arrived.
“Everything I thought was a lie, South Africa was supposed to be my heaven but it was not.”
She wipes her tears with anger, not allowing herself to be weak.
“I’ve cried about it all for so long you know and nobody cares&#8230; the tears don’t mean anything.
“My name meant nothing to the border police and some of the citizens. I was just another ‘kwere-kwere’.”
Since then, that’s all she’s known apart from poverty. Just as she did in Zimbabwe, Moyo finds and sells what she can to ensure she and her daughter do not go to bed hungry each day.
“I left one hell for another. Would I like to be back home with my family? Sure, but that’s no longer an option for me. I’m here now.”
&nbsp;
<h3>Emily Shamu</h3>
*Emily Shamu came to South Africa when her daughter, Lisa, was a toddler.
“She was too heavy for me to carry along with our luggage and a gentleman offered to carry her when we crossed the Limpopo River,” says Shamu.
She would normally not have trusted a stranger, but for Shamu, the focus was survival.
Shamu and the others walked 12 hours to Musina, the northernmost town in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
“I did not know we were going to walk for so long. At some point, I fell to the ground and started to scream ‘I am tired’.”
She describes her knees colliding with the gravel road. Her daughter watched as she cried inconsolably. “My child remembers. We rested for some time and I used this time to remind myself (sic) why I was going through this.”
Now, living in South Africa for eight years as a refugee, her life is defined by a cycle of begging – not for food or spare change – but, each quarter of the school year, to plead with the headmaster to allow her daughter to sit her exams with her peers.
“Every term, my heart sinks… I don’t know if he will say yes. We are just controlled by circumstances.”
In South Africa, students are required to produce a form of identification before they are allowed to partake in written assessments. Because Shamu has no asylum papers, she is unable to apply for an ID document for her daughter.
“If I’m honest, I have not tried to get my papers,” she says. “I tried in 2010 and the back and forth is just so demoralizing.” Shamu and her daughter live stateless with nothing to ensure them stability.
“I want to go home, if the situation can just change…”

Tag: Mothers

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