ZENZELE
Orphanage, Day-care Centre and
Home-based Care
Non-profit Organisation (NPO) Registration Number : 015 524 82909
P.O. Box, Kiasha Park 1829, South Africa. Tel. + 27 11 211 9017 Fax + 27 11 936 1527 Cell: + 27 83 6858 291
THE PROBLEM AFTER MAMA WINNIE’S DEATH
Mama Winnie who founded Zanzele Centre in 2000 passed away in October last year, Since then the Centre has been struggling along on the money we receive every three months from The Departments of Social Services and Health, a few private donations, and help from the Zakar Fund and other organisations. Now the Department of Social Development wants to accredit us again, We need to elect a committee. In January 2007 we have first meeting for the way forward,
We have met with social Service and Health for the funding and also Mr. Jeremia from PHD who was helping Zenzele in 2006.
Mama Linda Tukula is the project manager. On the 24 February 2007 we are going to elect new board members.
We have the problem about about electricity and also the phone bill has to be paid. We need groceries for every month for the orphans, vulnerable kids and also P.L.W.A and Bedridden. We also have grannies that need food parcels.
We need clothing for the Orphans,
money for vulnerable kids and Orphans to pay school uniform. We need
help in for our drop in centre. We have 400 children that are attending
crèche. We need food every day for the children. We need money to finish
the wall and also to pave the yard. We also need a machine for making
nappies and toilet paper. We would also like a machine for baking bread
so that all the women and men can get money to put plates on the table
for their families.
At she cares for kids Orphaned by AIDS and dropouts- and here’s how you can help too…..
There’s very little that’s fine about Finetown. Sprawling alongside the Golden Highway leading from Johannesburg to Vereeniging it’s a bleak strech of dilapidated brick houses and ramshackle corrugated iron shacks where poverty and despair hang in the air.
But there is one golden ray of light in the misery- and it comes from 66-year-old Winnie Mabaso. Mama Winnie, as she’s affectionately known by the people of Finetown, is “mother” to more than 1 700 children in the area, many of them orphaned as a result of AIDS.
She runs the Zenzele Counseling Project and houses 66 orphans aged between two and 18 years in the 14-room dwelling she bought recently. It’s small wonder this dynamic woman – who has endured enough personal tragedy to send most people over the edge – recently won the SABC1 OLD Mutual Community Award in Gauteng. Not that she talks about the accolades heaped on her regularly- humble and, oldest, she’d rather discuss the many children in her care.
She takes us to her own house, which is across the road from the Zenzele home, and invites us into the lounge. Although it’s sparsely furnished there’s a new cream sofa, still covered in plastic, occupying pride of place. She sits on it daintily, carefully arranging her black skirt around her. It’s raining outside but Mama Winnie doesn’t mind. “Rain brings life”, she says- and life is especially precious in a place such as Finetown which has seen so much death. AIDS is rife here and many of the children in Mama Winnie’s care are the heads of their households and look after younger siblings because their parents are too ill to do it or have passed away. ”Many households have lost breadwinners”, she says sadly. ”I am desperately worried about the number of new infections and the orphan crisis”.
All in all she’s
looking after 1 702 kids in the area, runs a free daycare service for
132 children and a home-based care service for the people living with
HIV/AIDS. But has help, she’s quick to point out, introducing us to
Moipone Louw, one of the 50 caregivers who volunteer their services to
Mama Winnie and Zenzele (which means self-help).
Moipone is the coordinator of the orphans’ education project and makes
sure kids aged between six and 18 go to school, She buys their uniforms,
pays their school fees and shops for food for the kids whose parents are
bedridden. She and Mama Winnie are planning to get money for four
teenagers’ matric dance at the end of the month. ”These girls are all
heading their household after their parents passed away from AIDS,” mama
Winnie says.”They can’t go to their dance in tatters. We want them to
wear nice clothes- they mustn’t feel different from other children”.
It’s this kind of devotion to others that has made her a living legend in Finetown but again she shrugs off the praise with a wave of her hand. ”God is great, you know. He took my only daughter last year and replaced her with a thousand children. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Mama Winnie’s beloved daughter was murdered in March last year- and within six months she’d also lost every other member of her immediate family. Her mother died two months after she’d buried her daughter and three months later her husband also passed away.” It seem to be loosing everyone close to me,” she says sadly. But it is the senseless death of her daughter, Nhlanhla, she is battling most to come to terms with. My daughter took me out for dinner the day she was killed, she recalls. Then she went home and when she was sleeping her husband shot her, and killed himself.
I still haven’t got over it; I still cry for my daughter .We were very close. She was born on Easter Sunday in 1974 and I buried her on Easter Sunday last year”. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against her forehead.” Perhaps time will heal the scars,” she whispers. Mama Winnie , who grew up in the Alexandra near Santon, used to live with her husband and daughter in Dube, Soweto, and worked as a nurse at Johannesburg Hospital and Chris Hani Baragwanath. The family moved to Finetown. The place used to be smallholding settlement before homeless people started moving in.
Mama Winnie would watch youngsters loitering on the streets or fighting turf wars- some were barely teenagers but already they were high school dropouts. She was determined to help them; these kids who had nothing – no adult supervision and precious little food – and were on a one –way ticket to hopelessness.” So I made soup and fed them and more kids started hanging around outside my house.” She started approaching businesses for donation to help the needy. One day she received a cheque for R5 000 which she used as part of payment for dream project, Zenzele.
By then AIDS was starting to ravage the area and the people needed her help more than ever. Children were being orphaned and needed a roof over their heads and also someone to care for them. So she started saving for a house – and four months ago bought the 14-room property she is still in the process of renovating. Two caregivers and 66 orphans live here. There are six bedrooms, each with eight bunk beds. There are also three bedrooms outside. One of the caregivers receives a stipend from the department of social development and the other from the department of health.
Mama Winnie runs Zenzele with the money donated from businesses and also uses some of the cash from her daughter’s death benefit payout. When the orphans and caregivers moved in the house had broken windows, a leaking roof, gaping holes in the ceiling, dripping taps, leaking toilets and no carpets on the floor. Vandals had removed the wooden parquet flooring. ”But I didn’t see as a dilapidated house- I saw it as promised land,” says mama Winnie, who is overseeing the building of six toilets and showers outside of the house, cutesy of builders and plumbers who work at the home in their free time.
Zenzele is a hive of activity from sunrise to sunset. Needy children from the area start trickling in for a breakfast of two slices of bread and tea. They return again at midday for lunch and in the evening for supper. Kids who head their households come for tea before school and return after classes to receive food parcels, toiletries and counseling before going home. Sometimes Mama Winnie receives tiny babies barely clinging to life.” We don’t want reject them but it’s hard,” she says, choking back tears.” It’s not a good thing to see a little baby dying in your arms,”
Mama Winnie and her staff also help people to get disability grants and give coffins to families who are so poor they can’t afford to bury their dead. Many young people come to the home asking for jobs but she always tells them to go back to school.” I’m prepared to pay for children who are hard workers and want to get a good education,” she says. She also arranges auxiliary nursing training for the caregivers who have Grade 10 and 12.
How does a woman of
66 have the energy to do all this? “ Someone has to help the children,”
she says simply. But there’s another reason too,” I love what I’m doing.
I can’t imagine doing anything else…”
From Drum Magazine
