SWAZILAND: Keep School Doors Open to AIDS Orphans, Vulnerable Kids

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Jan 31 2007 (IPS) - AIDS orphans aren’t the only children suffering in Swaziland. Those who have lost one or both parents to the epidemic have it rough, but so do tens of thousands of other Swazi children vulnerable to food shortages, scant medical care, and unsettled home life.

The bureaucracies of government welfare departments and humanitarian non-governmental organisations call them “orphans and vulnerable children” (OVC), while traditional authorities, such as chiefs, like to refer to them as “children of the communities”, because by custom all destitute Swazi children are the responsibility of their home areas.

But the obligation to feed, clothe, medicate and educate the country’s OVC population in 2007 has become even more onerous. The latest Health Ministry figures show nearly 40 percent of sexually active adults are HIV-positive. With anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs still scarce, the deaths caused by AIDS-related illnesses that follow leave behind a lot of children.

“Traditional coping mechanisms haven’t been able to keep up. Many households are now just grannies and their children. Neither generation can plough and harvest the fields,” said Abdoulaye Balde, country representative for the United Nations World Food Programme.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) counted 80,000 AIDS orphans in 2006, out of a Swazi population of about one million, and estimates the total will rise by 50 percent to 120,000, by 2010.

Nowhere has the crisis in Swaziland’s population of orphans and vulnerable children been more troubling than in education. The Education Ministry’s commitment to keep all OVC in their primary school classes became one of the most contentious political issues of 2006.

“We do have the money,” Goodman Kunene, Principal Secretary of the Education Ministry, told IPS.

“For 2007, 94,000 children from first grade to standard five will be assisted. That is out of a total enrolment of 300,000, or nearly one-third of all Swazi schoolchildren,” said Kunene.

Musa Dlamini, acting president of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers, still saw challenges ahead when he told IPS: “We are at least approaching the start of the 2007 school year late January with some new thinking, but I cannot say the problem is resolved.”

Last year the divide between the number of OVC in schools and government’s ability to pay for them prompted cash-strapped head teachers to march on the Education Ministry in protest. As the definition of children in need was expanded, teachers felt government had to come up with a more coherent approach to handling needy students.

Pelucy Ntambirweki, a UNICEF project officer said, “The important trend today is to include all vulnerable children in risk reduction programmes, and not just single orphans (who have lost one parent) and double orphans (who have lost both parents).”

Partly from UNICEF’s advocacy, the Education Ministry ordered schools to keep non-paying orphaned and vulnerable children in the classroom. Education Minister Constance Simelane declared it illegal to expel them. But with no additional money to pay their fees, friction with the schools’ head teachers was inevitable.

“The problem is that there was no tally on the actual number of OVC in Swaziland, or the number of OVC who were of school-going age. What government did was set aside 47 million rand, giving for instance 1,500 rand to each secondary school OVC, and when the money ran out, that was it,” said Dlamini.

Confusion was exacerbated by the number of OVC children listed as AIDS orphans who were found in fact to be living with their parents.

A member of parliament is currently on trial on allegations of such fraud. From the central Manzini region, he was charged with registering non-existent OVC at the high school where he was headmaster in 2003. The government would then allocate money to the school on the basis of the number of its OVC.

The case continues, and so do reported incidents of families claiming that their children are orphans, to make them eligible for school fee payments.

“Schools were given lists of AIDS orphans from all over the place – from the chief’s kraal, and church groups and aid workers. There was a lot of fraud,” said Dlamini.

Government officials said the financially strained national treasury cannot afford to raise the 47 million rand allotted to OVC education, so to make this pledge as accommodating as possible, Dlamini said, teachers hammered out an agreement with government to allow school head teachers to vet all OVC to ensure they were legitimate.

The second reform for 2007 will be the dropping of the flat fee of 1,500 rand – or emalangeni, the Swazi currency tied at par with the rand – per pupil. Once a national registry of OVC is tabulated, the government fund for these children will be distributed.

“Headmasters will be able to make reasonable school budgets based on money in hand, rather than promises that have gone unfulfilled in previous years,” Dlamini said.

But one notable innovation is now in place, with government providing some primary school textbooks to students. This has lifted a burden from indigent parents in a country where two-thirds of the people live in chronic poverty, according to the 2006 UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index.

However, universal and free primary education is a luxury still distant for the impoverished nation.

Crisis in the classroom emerged when local schools, funded by pupils’ school fees, had to function without revenue from a growing portion of the student body. Headmasters spoke of shutting schools down. Others used their ingenuity to trim valued programmes to make ends meet.

Several schools in 2006 cancelled cherished academic competitions and sporting events that had allowed students to shine. The cost of these events might involve merely the transportation of pupils and the price of token prizes. That such expenses should prove suddenly unaffordable testified to the meagre budgets of poor Swazi schools.

Efforts to assist orphans and vulnerable children include the establishment of Neighbourhood Care Points in rural areas and Child Care Points in towns to offer rudimentary lessons in reading and other subjects.

Not intended as substitutes for primary schools, the centres are operated by community volunteers. But the tasks of doing the work of full-time pre-school teachers, cooks, caregivers and security personnel has raised interest in finding some sort of stipend for the volunteers.

“Policy is moving toward giving community volunteers some kind of payment for the long, hard hours they put in. It’s the least we can do to show our appreciation,” said UNICEF’s Ntambirweki.

Policy makers have found that in this traditional single-tribe country, ruled by a king, grassroots participation in social programmes are more effective than institutional solutions, which Swazis may view as foreign and imposed on them.

That is why the network of community care points has expanded to over 300 in the past year, and government plans to stick to its policy of keeping OVC at home and in their schools, in familiar surroundings during the conflicted time of parental loss.

“For a country with so many orphans, there aren’t a lot of orphanages. By custom, Swazis like to look after each other; that’s the reason. For this to be done for all the OVC, assistance is needed. But the will is there,” says Buhle Dube.