National Peace Accord Trust

At 61 years of age Theodora Makalima is no ordinary retiree.

Since late 2000, when she took early retirement as a district health coordinator for the Mount Currie District in Kwa-Zulu Natal, she has remade herself into an angel of mercy on the lower KwaZulu-Natal South Coast providing succour for the poor and unemployed and providing hope for hundreds of AIDS sufferers and the AIDS orphans who have been left behind.

From her Khanyiselani Resource Centre in Kokstad, Theodora has engaged the surrounding community by re-skilling the disabled and putting them to work, training women in crafts, feeding the hungry, counselling AIDS victims, caring for AIDS orphans and providing trauma counselling for youth at risk and ex-combatants.

“I have always had a passion for community service at grass-roots level,” says Theodora who during her career with the Department of Health received recognition as a community worker first in her district then in the province and nationally when in 2000 she came third in a countrywide search for the woman who has done the most in caring for her community.

“When I took early retirement I cashed in my pension and started working with the disabled, mostly men who had been involved in mining accidents and who returned home with disability pensions but with nothing to do and no way of earning a living.

“It really all started when I got these disabled mine workers to start servicing wheelchairs, first their own and then as a commercial venture. Soon they had a small and profitable wheelchair repair business going. The next step was to get some welding equipment so that they could do a range of general metalwork from making gates to fencing.”

Today when you visit the Khanyiselani Centre, the disabled workers are hard at it in their wheelchairs producing a range of metal products for market that keep them busy, provide a steady income and restore their productive pride.

Caring for disabled mineworkers, however, was just the first step in Theodora’s mission in Kokstad.

“There were no interventions programmes in the Kokstad district focussing in the fast-escalating incidence of HIV and AIDS. Working in the community I came into contact with many AIDS sufferers and saw a rising number of AIDS orphans who needed help in the community,” she says.

She registered Khanyiselani as a non-profit organisation in 2001 and that year received funding from the Department of Health to open her skills centre for the disabled. The centre was so successful and well run that it was selected as a pillar site for the National Integration Plan. With funding, Theodora started a feeding scheme for AIDS orphans the following year.

From the 30 orphans who were originally part of the feeding scheme, today, the centre feeds 210 AIDS orphans on a daily basis through grants from the Department of Health. Additionally, it feeds more than 100 local families where there is no breadwinner.

Working with local church schools, Theodora has also ensured that AIDS orphans are at school each day where they are closely monitored.

“It is vital to work with other organisations, particularly the churches that are active in the community in whatever capacity. For sustainability, all community resources need to be pooled and organisations have to work together. To do this alone would be overwhelming,” says Theodora.

The next step in her community outreach was to provide support for HIV/AIDS sufferers. What started as a simple support group mushroomed into a fully-fledged support programme that today cares for over 400 HIV/AIDS sufferers in the local community.

“The needs are so great,” says Theodora. “These people are often without hope and because there is still a stigma attached to the disease, they often suffer in silence. But as the word spread, more and more AIDS suffers came forward and we work with them with the help of the Department of Health. We have only scratched the surface and we expect the numbers of people under our care to continue increasing. Needless to say, the numbers of AIDS orphans will also grow in the years to come.”

In 2003 Theodora established a partnership with the National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT), which is actively engaged in a number of interventions in deep rural areas.

“NPAT has been a great help to us,” says Theodora. “While the Department of Health funds our feeding schemes, NPAT secured funding for us from Themba Lesizwe and this, together with NPAT’s specialised training programmes, has enabled us to build capacity so that today we are able to offer a holistic intervention in the Kokstad area with a special focus on psychological and emotional trauma.

“NPAT has given us access to a broad range of specialist training and NPAT subsidises salaries for four of our staff members, which has made a great difference to our ability to deliver services to the community. NPAT’s work in training Community Development Workers and their eco-therapy training has had a great impact down here and we greatly value this partnership,” says Theodora.

Khanyiselani has now been identified as the site with the best practice among the sites for the National Integration Plan in KwaZulu-Natal. It has established effective working relationships with the Departments of Health, Welfare, Transport, Home Affairs and Labour and is in partnership with NPAT and TEBA Home Based Care.

As to the future, Theodora has secured land for a vegetable garden project and a spacious parkhome, now permanently located at the Khanyiselani centre and provides much needed office and training space. She has her eye on an old abandoned building within the centre complex that she hopes to acquire and convert into classrooms and training rooms.

“We have much work to do,” she says. “All this is a very promising start and as we go forward, Khanyiselani will be a training and resource hub for a whole range of community interventions on the South Coast. It is all about striving for excellence and capacity building because the better we are, the more people can be helped and trained. The response from the community has been humbling and I am full of hope for the future.”

All this, however, would never have happened without the drive and energy of the woman who has made it all possible.