Dire need for transport for disabled pupils

A YOUNG mother whose son was born HIV-positive, physically challenged and blind has one wish: to see her son live a normal life.

Musa* is eight but is as small as a four-year-old.

Nomalanga*, from White City Jabavu, Soweto, said she and Musa’s late father were HIV-positive when he was born.

“My son cannot walk, talk or feed himself. He is blind and wears a nappy day and night. He can hear but he cannot respond.

“When I call his name or say something funny, he laughs. I wish he was able to talk to me and see me,” Nomalanga, 28, said.

She said that when she fell pregnant while in Grade 10, she didn’t know anything about the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

She said she faced so many challenges in raising Musa, especially because she was unemployed and they relied on his monthly R1 600 disability grant.

“I love him. I cannot change the way he is and I have accepted it. My family have also accepted him… I have to make sure his nappy is dry and that he is fed. We are both taking ARVs (antiretrovirals) and are doing well,” she said. “I hope that one day he will be able to talk and write his name. I am going to enrol him at a school for children with disabilities next year,” Nomalanga said.

A few hundred kilometres away from where Musa and his mother live, in Manguzi, KwaZulu-Natal, is disabled Amahle Sibiya and her mother Busisiwe Sibiya.

Amahle, 8, loves to write but she hasn’t seen the inside of a classroom in eight months.

She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy after birth on February 11, 2009.

Sibiya told The Star that her daughter had not been able to get a quality education because of her condition. She last went to school in March, due to her bad eyesight and the lack of provision of learner transport by the KwaZulu-Natal departments of education and transport.

Sibiya, 29, said she used to carry her daughter on her back and take her to Entokozweni Primary School, and they would be mocked by their neighbours.

“Amahle cannot walk, but she can talk, and doctors at Manguzi Hospital said she would be able to go to school with abled children. We have encountered so many problems with public schools.”

Amahle is one of many disabled children who face challenges with getting to school.

In a matter that was before the Pietermaritzburg High Court, advocacy group Equal Education argued that the lack of provision of transport for these children was a violation of their right to education.

The court ruled that the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education should provide transport to thousands of learners at 12 schools in the uMkhanyakude District Municipality by April 1. Pupils were forced to travel long distances to

As many as 137 889 may not be receiving any schooling

get to school.

The organisation said that in the Department of Basic Education’s report released in November 2015, the department found that there were “as many as 182 153 children with disabilities in the province (KZN) between the ages of five and 18, of which as many as 137 889 (76%) may not be receiving any schooling”.

In court papers, another parent, Maria Dumazile Posega, said her daughter was forced to drop out of school because the trips to school were too unpleasant.

“Sometimes she would miss the classes early in the morning or even an entire day of schooling,” she said.

Sibiya, an unemployed mother-of-three, including Amahle, said they relied on social grants to survive.

Posega and Sibiya have a common wish: for their disabled children to be educated.

*Not their real names