“do not go gentle into that good night / rage rage against the dying of the light”

by Jean Yung and Babalo Ndenze, Cape Times, 27 June 2008

While 13 families celebrated owning their new government-subsidised homes yesterday, about 500 backyarders from Gugulethu staged a sit-in at the provincial housing offices.

Some among them occupied Housing and Local Government MEC Richard Dyantyi’s offices in Wale Street.

The group’s spokesperson, Mncedisi Twalo, said: “We won’t leave until (Dyantyi) comes and gives us keys for the newly built houses in Langa, Delft and Nyanga”.

He said some of the residents had been on the housing waiting list for more than 20 years.

Meanwhile, the Cape Town Community Housing Company handed keys to the last of the 42m2 homes in its Mitchells Plain development yesterday.

“We’re very excited. It’s the first time in our lives that we’ll have a house,” said 26-year-old Denise Cloete.

The Cape Town Community Housing company began moving applicants from all over Cape Town into the 238-house development, called Morgen’s Village, last November.

Each of the one and two-storey homes is priced under R140 000. In addition to a government subsidy of R60 000 as down payment, buyers must pay a minimum deposit of R2 500. They then make monthly payments of about R1 000 for five years or more.

According to the housing company’s Bheki Nkonyane, the families earn about R3 000 a month each.

The Cape Town Community Housing Company negotiating with the government to buy a plot of land behind Morgen’s Village. It plans to build a block of flats there to rent to families earning R1 500 a month.

Cape Times, 1 July 2008

The City of Cape Town paid tribute to the late director of health, Ivan Toms, yesterday by naming a busy health facility in his honour.

Mayor Helen Zille officially named the Mfuleni clinic in memory of the anti-apartheid activist and public healthcare champion who died earlier this year.

According to Zille, the clinic was named after Toms because the work that will be carried out there will benefit thousands of people in the years to come.

“Dr Toms taught me a big lesson … when he wanted to do something, he went out and did it,” said Zille.

She said that Toms had had “tremendous energy, commitment and enthusiasm for helping people and communities”.

The clinic was completed last August at a cost of R9.4 million and can serve up to 500 patients a day.

It provides services such as paediatrics, family planning and HIV/Aids treatment from Mondays to Fridays.

Zille lauded Toms’s efforts to reduce the city’s HIV/Aids and tuberculosis infection rates.

“Ivan spent his life dedicated to public health, and I think it’s a fitting tribute to dedicate this clinic to him,” current director of health Ivan Bromfield said.

Toms began his work in local health in 1980 by setting up a clinic in Crossroads. From 1986 to 1990, he was an administrator for the South African Christian Leadership Assembly health project. He ran projects in rural and peri-urban informal settlements as a co-ordinator for the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network from 1991 to 1993.

He was appointed executive director of health for Cape Town in 2006.

Toms died unexpectedly of meningococcal meningitis at his Mowbray home in March.

Cape Times, 2 July 2008

GREETED by a booming standing ovation, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu visited Masiphumelele yesterday to thank the community for its leadership in welcoming back foreigners after May’s xenophobic attacks.

Non-profit Celebrities for Humanity organised Tutu’s visit as part of its blanket drive for the small township near Fish Hoek.

“We hear that the people of Masiphumelele say no to xenophobia, and the people of Masiphumelele asked people to come back to their homes, and for that we say thank you,” Tutu said in Xhosa and English.

“We thank you, we thank you, we thank you, we thank you!”

As the beloved archbishop stepped off the stage, he stooped to high-five and hug children in the front row. About 400 young children filled the community hall to the brim, with some sitting two to a seat.

Community leaders swarmed around Tutu, trying to shake his hand as they followed him outside.

“He’s our tata,” said a beaming Shirley Madlingozi of Masiphumelele NGO Homes for Kids in South Africa (Hokisa). “He’s always here in Masi.”

“There is some hope in this community that we can change the lives of people,” said Hokisa’s director, Lutz van Dijk.

A home for children affected by HIV/Aids, Hokisa was opened in 2002 by Tutu.

A panel of celebrities, including actor Nico Panagio, rugby player Breyton Paulse, Ferdinand Rabie of television reality show Big Brother, supermodel Tammy-Anne Fortuin, and singers Darren Green and Vanessa Nolan, lined up to hand over 100 blankets.

Local pastor Mzuvukile Nikelo will transfer these blankets to children of disadvantaged households.

He is the chairperson of the 15-member Masiphumelele Community Forum, which was founded in 2003 to address problems between foreigners and locals in the community.

Meanwhile, Sapa reported that foreigners displaced by xenophobic attacks will be re-integrated into their communities by the end of August, a senior Home Affairs official said yesterday.

“We will integrate those displaced at the end of July and August,” deputy director-general for immigration Jackie McKay told reporters during a media conference in Pretoria.

Thousands of foreigners were displaced in the attacks that started in May. Since then they had been living in various camps around the country.

Public Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who chaired the briefing, said the Home Affairs Department had speeded up issuing identity documents.

Two days after immigrant-owned shops were looted and foreigners attacked on May 22, Masiphumelele residents publicly apologised and asked them to return.

The residents, led by community leaders and police, went door to door to retrieve stolen goods and report the perpetrators to the police.

A small group of leaders went to the Soetwater refugee camp to read out an apology and ask the victims to return.

by Jean Yung and Michelle Jones, Cape Times, 3 July 2008

The city’s Disaster Management Centre says an estimated 5 800 displaced African expatriates remain in places of safety, down from an estimated 20 000 at the height of the xenophobic attacks.

Head of the centre Greg Pillay says the city has spent R70 million on relief efforts.

Some of the expatriates are staying in temporary camps – 620 at Youngsfield, 440 at Blue Waters, 430 at Harmony Park near Gordons Bay, and 130 at Silverstream on the West Coast, according to staff at the camps.

The rest are being accommodated in municipal halls and on private properties, such as churches and mosques.

At the Chrysalis Academy in Tokai, where 165 expatriates are being accommodated, the displaced people and volunteers were upset when the provincial government took over responsibility for the supply of food two days ago.

Volunteers had been cooking three meals a day, using a kitchen at the academy. Now the expatriates are receiving the same food as those in safety camps.

“The food has obviously changed and people were frustrated, but it’s wrong to tempt them with stuff they cannot afford when they leave here – it creates expectations,” Chrysalis chief executive Nomfundo Matroos said.

A Muslim relief organisation, Mustadafin Foundation, was feeding 3 600 people a day, down from 12 000 four weeks ago, spokesperson Alia Lambada said.

The organisation allocated R5 for breakfast and R12 for supper for each person each day and had spent more than R1m, Lambada said.

The SA National Zakáh Fund has spent about R1 million.

The Salvation Army has spent about R250 000 on blankets, food and petrol, while Historically Disadvantaged Individuals Support is feeding 1 700 people, down from 7 600 a few weeks ago.

Cape Times, 26 June 2008

The winner of the third annual St Luke’s Hospice Million Rand raffle spent his windfall instantly – he gave it right back to the hospice.

Staff at St Luke’s in Kenilworth are reeling from the gift, the greatest individual donation in the organisation’s 27-year history, but feel even more emotional about not being able to thank the man personally.

The donor wished to remain anonymous.

“When the staff heard the news, they were so disappointed. A lot of people wanted to know who he is, so they could say to him, ‘Listen here, you don’t know how much this is appreciated’,” said community sisters supervisor Zelda Daniels. Even she was not permitted to know his identity.

Ed West, administrator at St Luke’s, left a message at the raffle winner’s office on Saturday morning after the winning ticket was drawn from 2 000 entries. Each ticket cost R1 000.

“Monday morning, my phone rang, and it was him,” said West. “I congratulated him and starting taking his banking details when he said, ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m donating the whole amount back to you’.

“For four hours after that, I couldn’t work. My mind was going around and around,” West said.

According to West, the donor had been supporting St Luke’s over the years.

The Hospice plans to put part of the money towards the salaries of its more than 50 nursing staff who work for wages below the market rate. It had been forced to retrench six of its caregivers two months ago.

St Luke’s cares for more than 800 patients at any given time, approximately 300 of whom are dying of HIV/Aids. It depends on donations to support its annual budget of R27m.

Cape Times, 26 June 2008

A month after xenophobic attacks forced Rais Sewika and his family out of Philippi, the 14-year-old Congolese boy’s sheer perseverance to return to school was rewarded on Monday when he finally earned a place at high school.

At Tokai’s Chrysalis Academy, where Sewika’s family has been staying for four weeks, Sewika was the last child to go back to school.

“Rais was so motivated to go back to school, I couldn’t believe it,” said Chrysalis volunteer Nicola Tyson.

According to volunteers at the camp, two representatives dispatched by the Department of Education to place the camp’s 20 children were slow in responding to requests, so they started contacting schools and arranged transport for the children themselves.

They could not place Sewika because all the English-speaking high schools in the area said they had no available places.

So Sewika hopped on a bus last week to ask the principal of Muizenberg High School himself.

Faced with the same answer, he went to a nearby Pick n Pay and stayed there for seven hours until the bus returned to Chrysalis.

Only after Metropole South circuit manager Yusuf Kader personally went from school to school on Monday to speak to principals did Sewika get placed.

“Most of the time we try our best, but when you get to a school, and the principal says he’s got 45 children in the class, you know the teachers are struggling to cope, and one more makes it very difficult,” Kader said.

When Sewika was 12, his parents emigrated from the DRC with his four sisters.

They left him behind with a family friend and said that they would send for him when they could support him.

Three months later, in January 2007, the family Sewika was staying with took him to Johannesburg.

From there he took a train to Cape Town alone to join his family.

Said UCT Professor of Psychology Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, who has been providing counselling to both adults and children at Chrysalis Academy: “When children are exposed to trauma like this, they are desperate to belong somewhere.”

She said that the children were eager to talk about how much they’ve gone through – how they lost their books and their pens and how they wished to return to school.

“Unfortunately, it takes a bit of time to place them because we are pressed for space,” Education MEC Cameron Dugmore’s spokesperson, Gert Witbooi said.

Because displaced foreigners had been moving between camps and into community halls, the Department of Education found it difficult to maintain an accurate record of the children who still needed to be placed in schools, Witbooi said.

A US-based education programme has brought together 507 pupils and teachers from 51 countries to Cape Town for a globally-minded learning expedition on environmental science this week.

Every year, the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (Globe) programme oversees a million students from far-flung corners of the world.

The students gather scientific data in their own backyards for worldwide projects.

Hailing from Cameroon, Thailand, Jordan and Argentina, among other countries, the 247 students have come to UCT to share with each other their class research on the topics such as water quality, climate change and indigenous plants.

“Our dream is to have students begin working on world problems together,” said Globe’s deputy director Emmett Wright.

To that end, the 2008 conference focuses in particular on building sustainable communities, according to Wright.

Attending this year from South Africa are 25 pupils and eight teachers from George, Mossel Bay, Port Elizabeth and Grahams-town.

They have collected weather data to study global warming and planted local herbs to record their growth rates.

“It’s an excellent programme because they are hands-on activities that get kids to deal with proper terminology,” said science teacher John Claassen of Conville Primary in George, which has been working with Globe since 2002.

The Globe programme was started in 1994 by former US vice-president Al Gore as a way to give primary and high-school students hands-on science and computer training.