Face the People portraits and stories honouring community health workers “Face the People” is a multi-media exhibition of portraits and stories of twenty community health workers from Salt River to Strand, Mitchells Plain to Khayelitsha in Cape Town. In this exhibition you will face the people for whom the word ‘care’ is an activity rather than just a feeling. Each of the people featured in this project has been nominated by their local Health Committees because of the extraordinary work that they and their projects are doing. Each nominee gave time and energy to sit for their portraits to be painted from life, and to be interviewed. They were also photographed doing what they do every day. The exhibition “Face the People” is designed as a tool with three goals: View photographs of the exhibition openings that have taken place in Langa, UWC, Khayelitsha and Salt River.
Portraitist and feminist activist, Gabrielle Le Roux painted the portraits from life, whilst the nominees sat and related their stories. Filmmaker, photographer and artist, Kali van der Merwe visited each community and photographed the work of the volunteers. This collaboration has produced a unique, socially relevant exhibition of portraits depicting the essence of each nominee.
The “Face the People” exhibition has been produced in collaboration with the Rita Edwards, head (at the time) of the Social Capital Project of the Western Cape, Provincial Health Department, Metro District Health Services and the District Health Committee Forum that nominated the people whose portraits feature in this exhibition. Through the exhibition, the Department of Health would like to honour, acknowledge and value the work done by voluntary community health-workers.
This exhibition creates an honouring space in which people can come together from across the board for workshops, discussions and events that can birth new cross-community, cross-sectoral collaborations. Communities can use the exhibition space to strengthen existing bonds and share solutions to common problems. The “Face the People” DVD is about the lives and work of the community health workers and forms part of the exhibition. THE PROCESS OF THE EXHIBITION contact Other-Wise media if you wish to host this exhibition or want a copy of the DVD. face the people page 1 (below)
face the people page 2
portraits - Gabrielle Le Roux photographs - Kali van der Merwe
Nomalungelo Laipi Macozoma - Langa, Cape Town My family shaped us, they were very people-orientated people. They made a lot of friends, even across the colour line. They made a lot of friends, even across the colour line. I grew up in Langa and went to school in Langa and then I went to the Eastern Cape for higher education and did some nursing. I got this job from the Red Cross Society, black people who were educated couldn’t get jobs back then, so I worked there for twenty years. Then the Crossroads faction started and in response interested parties like the tertiaries, the churches, the Muslim Women’s organisation, The Jewish Women’s organisation, the National Council of African Women came together. A lot was happening, the men were fighting and we thought, how about looking after the children? So that’s how Grassroots was started. They had to take children from zero to six years old, there were no pre-schools then. I had to see that they got some support like food and clothing and education on health and welfare issues. As we were being trained, we trained them. Today the main problems are illiteracy, poverty, the sicknesses and HIV/AIDS. Drugs are a problem too now, Langa was not like that before, not that Langa hasn’t got crime, but it’s not as bad as the other areas because Langa is unique, everybody knows everybody. Before 1990 I got very sick, I had a heart failure and when I was recuperating my cousin said I must join the Health Committee. I would go to the day hospital for meetings. Everything is consultative so that you can explain it to the communities. That’s how the local authority works. We would invite them: traditional healers, people from all walks of life, the teaching profession, the police, and then they would listen and then, at the same time, we would be trained so that we can answer the communities questions I’ve worked all my life with the non-governmental organisations. I’m involved in an organisation for physically and mentally challenged children and I’m also very involved in Child Abuse Protocols.
Red Cross started this disaster relief because of the fires in Joe Slovo and we were trained by the fire brigades and the city police. The shacks were very close and we learned that people should be careful where they build. It’s not because they are not wanted there, it’s because there’s a hazard. Things have changed a lot and now at the clinic, we’ve got people living with HIV/AIDS. Nobody could talk about it then when it started, so we started this project, but it’s very slow because of the funding. We’ve got three containers but we haven’t got water, the floors need to be treated, and we need to have toilets, but at least it’s something and the soup kitchen is doing very well. I think now, the time has come for the government to really take note of the volunteers because they are doing a lot of work. We are mothers, we’ve got grandchildren, we’ve got other problems. Now lately you’ll find that our youth, don’t like to volunteer. It’s all the elderly people volunteering. A certain bit of stipend should be seen as something that would help. Really, the government is trying to unearth all the difficulties that the people are enduring, but they must be hands-on with the people, come down to the people and see how we are living. My message to my people is that we must work together and help other people. Yes, the government gets the credit but we are always working for our own people.
Bukiwe Mapasa - Khayelitsha, Cape Town I have been living in Site B, Khayelitsha since 1985. It used to be a quiet place with a few shacks, now more and more people are coming every day. It is a city. The population growth brings problems and a big need for services. In 1997 I found out I was supposed to be a traditional healer. I prayed and my grandfather came to my dreams and told me that I should, and I followed that. I was brought up in a Christian home and my family didn’t follow up their culture but when I found this out my mother supported me. I had to lock up my house and leave it for three years while I completed my training between Durban and Cape Town. After my mother died, I had another thought: I think my sangoma-ship won’t work if I don’t see to the environment in Khayelitsha and look after the people. So I moved back and started to involve myself with the organisations within the community. Water and sanitation are the biggest problems we have in my area, which is the area that has got the most informal settlements. You’ll find that people need more education on how to look after the services that have been brought to them. We have got roads that have been done. We have got water and sanitation being done, though not properly done. The community doesn’t see it their responsibility to look after the services that have been given. There are communal taps being used by a group of people within the informal settlements that, although they are so badly needed, are a disaster area. You will find those communal taps are dirty, everything is being thrown, litter, faeces; that is not healthy for them. Kids are playing with the water and it is being used unnecessarily. Even if they are earning people don’t feel they need to pay rates and this has an effect, for example the drains are not being looked after in our community. People who are making business to earn money don’t see the effect they are having is making a health hazard in the area. They throw dirt in the drains, blocking the drains every now and then. When the community leaders tell them not to do this they feel they don’t need to listen to them. They always need the officials to come and talk to them.
I was elected as chairperson of the Water and Sanitation Forum educating people about their health and how to behave in looking after the services. I’m the type of person that if I’m driving something, I’ve got to do it so that every participant can be happy. So I’ve been involved with this in 2002, 2003, 2004, and they were hard years for me. I was doing all the up and down without a cent. From Monday to Monday attending meetings in the evening and I was all out for the community, not being home. And my boy was growing by then and I couldn’t give him any attention, as a result Bobby was not performing well at school. Things went from bad to worse and now he’s blaming me that I didn’t have time for him. I’ve decided I’ve got to cut off some of my activities. The people must look after their communities, the well-being of their areas depend on them. And also, government, the officials must know that there are people, who are dedicated to do the work without payment, but those people should be recognised. They need to dig for them, the people who are doing the most work are not the ones shouting about it, they are quiet, just doing the work.
Maria Appie - Mitchells Plain, Cape Town I was born on a farm on the border of Orange Free State and the Cape Province. My grandparents got there in 1895. My grandfather was Xhosa speaking, my grandmother was also Xhosa speaking, she never spoke Afrikaans to us, only Xhosa. On my father’s side it was Afrikaans and there was a little bit of Griqua taal (language). Unfortunately this Griqua grandmother died and her children didn’t take up their language. So in our family it was a mengelmoes (mix) of languages. But the farmer, he was just an English-speaking farmer and that is where we learned English. I grew up and I had to go to school. Those were the tough days, when we had to eat locusts, you know, sprinkaanboutjies, locust legs. I finished my schooling and after that I wanted to go and do nursing. At that time there was apartheid and I wanted to earn good money so that my mother would never have to go and work for the boere (whites). I started doing assistant nursing in 1954. By the time I retired, I had already worked Somerset Hospital, Groote Schuur, Conradie Hospital, Zirelda Steyn Old Age Home. Come 1994, ’92, ’93, at that time it’s mos now integration...then this Provincial Health Plan came out and within that plan there were the Health Committees and the whole community participation thing. So I started a Health Committee in Portlands. Primary health care is my speciality. Today I’ve got a hundred or more Health Committee members, they are the people that are building our country, the poor people’s country. The whole of Mitchells Plain is my district. In Parliament they are only talking about things that we, the community, have done already, and yet they are earning thousands of rands. We committed community people have done all that just out of our own initiative because we know what’s going on in the field, but they don’t know. The poorest of the poor in rural areas, they don’t know that they are the poorest of the poor. When they come to the urban areas, then they open their eyes and see, “O, maar ons was baie arm (Oh, we were very poor) I’ve been working hard and I didn’t receive anything. I was a resource to those rich people and I didn’t even realise it.” That is why today we see tyre-burning and so on, people are so frustrated because they think, ”Jina, if we had had all the resources that are there today, we wouldn’t have been like this.”
Here I am a single mother, single grandmother, single great-grandmother. I am seventy seven years old. I’m still struggling, I’ve got no resources but I’m not going to give up because what I want to do is not finished. What keeps me going? It’s honesty, truth and communication. I have opened a lot of minds. *an insulting racist word for black people which it is now illegal to use.
Buziwe Phendu - Philippi, Cape Town I was born in the Eastern Cape. I have two children, a daughter of fourteen who is physically disabled and a seven year old son in Grade 2. I am staying in Philippi at Browns Farm where I take care of eight physically disabled children. I started a crèche in 2003 at my home. The reason why I opened the crèche is that I, as a parent of a disabled child, saw the difficulties of taking care of a disabled child at home. I discovered that other parents hid their disabled children away in their homes without feeding or changing them for the whole day while they go out looking for work or shopping. So, as parents of disabled children we saw the need to look after these children as they are not admitted to schools because they need special care. They make no signs when they need to go to the toilet or are hungry, so we opened the crèche. It’s not operating very well because we still don’t have any food to give the children, or transport for them. They all stay in different parts of Philippi, mostly belonging to unmarried parents thus being in the care of their grandmothers who provide lunch boxes to sustain them the whole day. I use my RDP house that I have extended. I use the kitchen and another room so the space is small for these children and they can’t play well. I wish I could get a bigger place for them. What makes me take care of these children all the time is that they give me life inside. It’s something that’s in my heart, I love children a lot, especially disabled children.
What I would like to say to parents of disabled children is to ask them to take care of their children, they need your love. See them in the same light as the one with no abnormality because they are no different. At the crèche, I get help from two parents at the moment. They volunteer to help look after the children and don’t get paid for it. I meet with a group of disabled adults who want to do craft work. If we can get a place to work and work equipment it would be better because most of these disabled adults have families dependent on them and they rely solely on their disability grant, so if they can do hand-work it would be better so they can also earn something. Something else I do is to work as a TB treatment supporter. I oversee people who have TB, who come to take their medication at my home, in the afternoon, for those who are working and in the morning for those who can. It is important that people take their medication for six months every day Monday to Friday. I also work as a home-based care-giver in Philippi caring for sick people, bed-bound and unable to do things for themselves, I bath them and make them food when there’s no one to do that. If whoever they live with is working, they leave things prepared so I arrive, boil water and bath the ill person. In other homes it can be difficult as you may on arrival find no paraffin and must go and buy paraffin, buy soap and then boil water, and thus take a long time to wash the person. Everyone volunteers themselves to do what is close to their hearts, so what I want to do with my life is help other people in the place where I live.
Cassandra Abrahams – Elsies River, Cape Town I grew up in a house where my people, my family were community people. The doors were always open to everyone no matter colour or what. That’s why I’m very fond of African people and I make friends very easily and quickly. My mother was like a self-made lawyer, almost like an attorney and she used to help people and I was curious and always wanted to know: “Now how did you manage that?” So at the age of thirteen I started doing my own community work with my mother. And that’s how I grew up. The seed was sown. I also help people with their court cases. We have youth who were framed for murder, afraid to speak out, and behind bars for three and a half or four years. When people come to me for that kind of help I tell them I don’t want to hear, they must put it all on paper, I’ll certify it for them and work from there. The greatest achievement for me was when two of those kids who were framed came out. My work from the health side is that I’m busy now at the day hospital with a herb garden and a fruit garden for the TB patients. I can say TB is the biggest problem in my area. I also do house visits, in some of the houses there are ten or twenty people coughing and breathing, they’re all like sardines in a tin of sardines, packed. The children are suffering. That is where I go and speak to the people, and give them some motivation to come to the clinic. No matter who you are, if I hear you cough I ask, “How long are you coughing? Did you do something about it?” I’ve got a team because you can’t work alone, you’ll burn out at the end of the day. And that is also what people ask me, “How do you manage? You’ve got so many caps, how do you manage?” Teamwork and planning. Now the hospital called for some of us from my team to come and help there because they saw what we are doing in the community. Now I’ve got ten volunteers in the hospital as well. That is how I work, I don’t work alone. I start something alone but then I bring others in.
The biggest support in my life was my husband but he died three years ago, and I do miss that. He would stand up in the night, then I hear the car pulls out, taking the people to the hospital, doesn’t matter what time of the night. I thank God that I had a husband like that, that also loved the community. That’s why I’m scared to take another one, I don’t know what I’m going to get! In my area it was very hard at times, they ran in the open with guns, they shoot like anything, people were killed already, and children ran screaming into my house. When everyone is inside I close the door. I keep them there till everything is quiet. My husband used to tease me, “Is there a board somewhere outside that says “Here, Everyone is Welcome?” The community’s my own family and that’s how I treat them. And I believe if you don’t love yourself, you can’t give love outside because that is a thing that comes from the inside.
Christina Killian - Retreat, Cape Town I didn’t know my mom and my dad because my mom died when I was ten months old, and my dad also. I was told by my elder sister that they died of tuberculosis and we went to this orphanage. As I grew up I was very adamant, you know, not having a mom, not having a dad, I was going to go out there, and I was going to help other people. I was going to become a nurse, and after becoming a nurse I was going to study and I was going to become a doctor because I wanted to give so much of myself into the community. At the age of fourteen my dreams were shattered when a social worker from the old government took me out of school and took me to work as a “nursemaid” for a white family. I had no choice. I didn’t get the education I wanted, to get to matric, but I joined the library and I started reading and I’m sure that I kept my education up. My husband was very sick, a chronic patient, I looked after him for twenty years. I’ve got seven children, twenty two grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren. It was a struggle to get my children through education with a sick husband. Two days after he was buried, a neighbour came to me and told me about an organisation called CROSAR, Concerned Residents of Steenberg and Retreat. She had so much knowledge of what was happening in the community and she got me involved, sitting in on meetings. I was nominated to speak for my road and I became that person, being the voice of the community. I later became the chairperson of Retreat Health Committee, and there were lots of meetings I had to attend. I met such wonderful people. I have been in the community for ten and a half years now. I have never been paid for ten and a half years but I feel happy with what I am doing. The problems in my area at the moment now is drugs, HIV, lots of TB, lots of unemployment, and lots of hunger. I know what it is to be hungry because I was also hungry at a time.
I volunteer at the school opposite my door, I’ve been a volunteer there for many years. I take every opportunity to teach the children about AIDS. Even the senior citizens at the hospital, I would go and fetch their medication, then they don’t have to sit and wait the whole day.
Damaris Fritz – Delft, Cape Town My political involvement started because of the family that I have, black American father, white mother and in the apartheid era, she would be able to get into the first class carriage and we must go and sit in the third class. She could go into the shops and we need to stand outside the shops. And that just moved me to say, “Okay, if this is what is happening, I need to make a difference,” and I was very young at that stage. At the moment, I think one of the biggest problems is domestic violence. And then also child neglect and abuse is rife, it is a daily occurrence. And the other one is the fact that people don’t really take care of themselves. They default, whether they’re asthmatics, or diabetics they don’t keep up their treatments and then end up very sick or dying when they come back to the clinic. In 1998, not long after I moved to Delft, Uncle Polly asked me to come to the Health Committee and I went and I’m still involved, I think it’s because of my medical background I’m still involved. I wanted to become a nurse, worked as a care-giver, then I became a project manager for home-based care and community Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses. A lot of people have changed their lifestyle because of my willingness to teach others. When we started off, there was no funding. So, for four years it was merely voluntary work, day and night and that is why I’m a single mother because I had to choose, will I continue working as a volunteer, or will I stay at my husband’s side? I have made a decision that I will stay in this community and I will remain being involved in the lives of people.
Thus far, in all the projects that I have started in Delft, it’s mostly women who get involved. So, my question was always, you know, if men are unemployed as well, why don’t they get involved? What inspires me the most is to see the change in people, to see people’s behaviour starting to change. I think the respect that they first gain for themselves and then for others, wanting to make that difference in their community. I think most of my life is about making a change. Change is painful, but it’s beautiful at the end of the day. My message to women is that we need to strengthen, capacitate, care for and nurture one another so that our girl-children grow up seeing the caring and nurturing amongst women. What you have in you, makes you either rich or poor. The portrait painting is one of the most beautiful ways that we could honour people in our communities. It is a remembrance of what you’ve done for the community, what people acknowledge you for.
Deborah Palm - Grassy Park, Cape Town My background made me the person that I am today. I grew up in Claremont, when the Group Areas Act came in we had to move out. When I was still at school I wanted to do nursing but the money wasn’t there to go and study. I fell pregnant at the age of seventeen and I left school to give birth and it was about a year or two I was at home, then I ended up in retail. I was someone that used to sit back, had a lot of say, but I didn’t go forward. When I got involved with home-based care and community health I started speaking out and it empowered me a lot, especially speaking about the abuses going. That is actually a sore part for me because I was in a marriage where I was abused. And then one day I just decided enough is enough, no matter what I’m earning, I’m getting out and I’m going to start from new, which I did. I’ve been working as a home-based carer in the community where I live for five years now. I work with an organisation call Compassion in Action. I’m a DOTS supporter (Directly Observable Treatment Support) too which means that I give the medication to the TB clients at the clinic. I’m the chairperson of the health committee at the clinic also. The majority of the clients that we visit as home-based carers are stroke clients. We have a few with head injuries and some have dementias. From teenagers to elderly people are suffering with strokes. The HIV status is very high in the Grassy Park area too but people are not coming forward because they’re afraid of the stigma. Teenage pregnancy is common and a lot of girls are being forced to have sex by boys. Another big problem with the teenagers is drugs especially this new drug tik. Teenagers come in who’ve been abused by their boyfriends specially if the girls get involved with taxi drivers and older married men. Primary school children are getting into smoking and drugs too.
I enjoy what I do because you get to know lots of different types of people, they know my soft spots and I know their soft spots. So on their side, it’s being wanted and on my side also. At the end of the day we as home-carers, we are social workers, we are family…whatever the client needs. One client tells me the same things over and over. He had a head injury and he had to learn to all over again how to crawl, how to walk, how to eat. He’s an ex-pastor and his desire is to go and preach again one day but he won’t be able to because he can’t remember what happened last week. We have fun times together and laugh and it’s actually enjoyable. I wouldn’t want to trade this work that I’m doing now, although it’s voluntary work. Sometimes I think maybe I’ll work with an agency or in the hospital but I prefer to stick with the low pay and enjoy what I’m doing. You need a heart for this type of work which I believe I do have.
Frikkie Carstens - Strand, Cape Town Clinic. This work costs me money from my own pocket and a lot of time, and it causes many problems for me at home, but I don’t mind because I feel that I am achieving something, I am helping people. The reason why I am so dedicated is to improve conditions for people locally who are dependent on these clinics, so that they can improve their own health. That is what I’m fighting for. One of the big problems is transport to get people to meetings and I often go to fetch all the people from where they live and bring them to the meeting and drop them home again. Our meetings are on Saturdays and the public taxis wait until they are full before they go, so sometimes I get a call from a committee member that they are on their way to the meeting but they are held up because the taxi is still waiting for more people. Then I will go and fetch them immediately so that they don’t arrive when the meeting is already nearly finished. People with cars don’t understand how different it is for people in different circumstances, how much effort it takes to get to a meeting by public transport from those outlying areas. They just get in their cars and drive. Also it’s a long way from where some of the people live to where they can pick up transport, if it’s raining they need help. I recently received a rather discouraging answer to a letter I wrote to a government minister asking for help. I calmly thought about the matter and I decided that I will not accept it, I will not lie down, I will continue to fight. I have thought, sometimes, is it worth it? And then you see again how people are struggling, then I go to the clinic and I see the people, they struggle to get medication, and then I say: “Not a damn!” And then I start fighting all over again.
As I see it social capital is about people realising that they need to be good examples to the youth, and that they can improve their own circumstances so that their children can have better opportunities. |
"Now lately you’ll find that our youth, don’t like to volunteer. It’s all the elderly people volunteering."
"The people who are doing the most work are not the ones shouting about it, they are quiet, just doing the work."
"I discovered that other parents hid their disabled children away in their homes."
