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PROLONGED DROUGHT IN THE NORTHERN CAPE TAKES ITS TOLL ON YOUNG PEOPLE’S MENTAL HEALTH
The story of drought in Williston in the Northern Cape, it turns out, is also the story of a prized picture displayed on a fridge door in a tiny house on the outskirts of this town. This picture of a smiling netball team has been bleached by the sun. You can’t really distinguish all the team members. Nevertheless, the image is kept as a reminder – something deferred, a wish maybe.
Drought is a complex and creeping phenomenon. It is also a trigger event that deepens underlying social vulnerabilities within communities.
Now, almost a decade into a severe drought, many people in the region exist in survival mode, eking out an existence in the precarious, harsh context of our unfolding climate reality.
It has been eight years of hardship and uncertainty for the community of Williston, including the parents of Marcia Wilsket (18), the slight but agile goal-attack player in the photo.
The grinning Marcia Wilsket in the photo, in reality has a somewhat weary smile when she meets us. The only thing between her and the scorching hot tar road is a pair of worn-out plastic sandals. She is on her way home from the town centre.
“Sometimes, I feel a bit overwhelmed,” says Wilsket. She avoids making eye contact, inhales to sigh and says: “I also miss living on the farm.” She now lives in Amandelboom, a part of town that the urban planners of apartheid-era South Africa designated a “coloured” area.
Wilsket’s father earns his living intermittently as a farmworker and during the drought lost his job – he worked on four farms and also did casual work whenever the opportunity presented itself.
The town’s primary economic lifeline – sheep farming – has taken a knock because of the prolonged drought. Although local farmers continue to show resilience under the enduring tough conditions, the burden of this extreme event has become too much for many people on the farms.
Uprooted
Already caught in a wide-ranging climate of scarcity, Wilsket’s life was further changed when she became pregnant during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Baby Me-Jade was born in October last year. “Being pregnant during the pandemic meant I couldn’t go to school.
“So I stayed at home, often only interacting with other kids when writing exams.”
The tar road passes by an overgrown cemetery with plastic bouquets and weathered gravestones. The road eventually becomes a single dirt track.
We reach the edge of town. “This is us here,” Wilsket says in front of a brick house. She shows us around. Bobby, Lady and Benno are happy to see her, tails wagging. Some small children appear and ask her for bread.
Wilsket lives with her mother (40), brother (15), sister (12) and two foster children (one is seven, the other 10 years old) in this rented two-bedroom house. Her father (45) and older brother (23) aren’t in; they are working on a farm again. They visit when possible.
The family’s hardships, disruptions and ensuing uncertainties make Wilsket uneasy and anxious. “I don’t know if I will have time to just be a kid again,” she says.
A sheer curtain serves as a divider between the kitchen and living area, and Wilsket’s bedroom that she shares with her siblings. Her mother and the youngest sleep in the only room with a window. Adjacent to this room is the quietest place in the house, Wilsket tells us. “This is where I normally do my homework,” she says. There is just enough space for a small table, two kitchen chairs and a threadbare couch.
Having to move around a lot during the drought and then going to town marked the start of an uncertain time for her, Wilsket recalls. She and her brother Quinton stayed at the local school’s hostel for a while, an arrangement that brought them some stability. But it also meant that the members of the family were separated, often for long stretches.
Wilsket’s mother moved to town to be with them. She found a job as a domestic worker and later started helping out at a local school’s feeding programme.
The impact on learners
According to Netta van Zyl, head of Williston High School, the drought’s impact on learners remains under-reported. During the worst of the drought, many schoolgirls struggled with the burden of financial hardship and hunger as household incomes dried up.
“We had learners with no water at home and no money to buy it,” she says. “Many girls quietly asked to shower at the hostel before school, expressing shame about their personal hygiene.
“We also had learners who relied heavily on the school feeding scheme for their only meal of the day because their parents had no work. Many would often ask for a second helping, and we’d know they were going to take it home to a family member.”
A sign of things to come?
Climate change has already increased the frequency of multiyear droughts in southern Africa and the risk will increase further as global warming intensifies.
The effects of this on people’s wellbeing, livelihoods and future prospects are part of the ripple effect of climate change, says Francois Engelbrecht, a distinguished climatology professor at Wits University’s Global Change Institute.
“Earth is warming faster than previously thought, and the window to avoid catastrophic outcomes is closing,” he cautions.
Caught in a dry cycle
Dr Ilse Eigelaar-Meets, a sociologist from Stellenbosch University (SU), says the socioeconomic effects of the drought have been devastating for many households. She is worried about the cumulative stressors of the drought on the resilience and wellbeing of Williston’s people.
“Unemployment is rising in town. There are very few jobs available for young people, even those who manage to finish school…”
In town, food is available but often inaccessible. Rising food prices have worsened hunger in the area.
“We know that severe hunger in children is associated with internalising behaviour problems such as depression and anxiety. There is also emerging evidence that children are more likely to have a mental health problem if their parent is in psychological distress,” says Eigelaar-Meets.
The school dropout rate in town is high and teenage pregnancies seem to be rising.
“Having a child as a teenager has a negative effect on the mother’s chances of finishing school. And because such a teenager is less likely to go back to school, her earning potential goes down, and she is more likely to remain in or drop into poverty,” says Eigelaar-Meets.
Mental health in a warming world
It is extraordinarily difficult for most children and young people to adapt to the advancing climate shocks, including climate change-exacerbated disasters, water insecurity and economic losses, says
Dr Garret Barnwell, a clinical psychologist and community psychology practitioner.
“Children bear the greatest burden of climate change,” he points out. “Not only are they more vulnerable than adults to extreme weather and its health effects, but their world is becoming a more dangerous place to live.”
People often confuse the meanings of terms such as “mental illness”, “mental health”, “mental disorder” and “mental wellbeing”.
“It is more helpful to think of someone as being on a continuum of [emotional] wellbeing,” says Professor Mark Tomlinson of the Institute for Life Course Health Research in SU’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.
“At the one end of the continuum is mental health, where young people feel content, experience joy, and ‘thrive’. Others may be coping with their everyday routines but also be experiencing times when they feel worried, anxious or distressed.
“On the other extreme end, we find very serious mental disorders, including schizophrenia and psychosis. So, everything else – including anxiety related to extreme weather events – is, for instance, situated somewhere between those two points.”
Until now, local climate-related adaptation responses have paid very little attention to the effects of climate change on the mental health and wellbeing of young people. “This needs to change for the sake of our children,” Tomlinson believes.
Towards new beginnings
This brings us back to Marcia Wilsket. She needs to drop the baby off at her boyfriend’s mother’s house near the cemetery. She will be baby-sitting Me-Jade during school hours this term. Edgar Klaaste (18) is the father, a matric learner at the same school Wilsket attends.
“I really want to finish school. I want to get a real job, perhaps somewhere outside of town. My baby deserves a better life,” she says.
She also dreams of returning to the netball court later this year. “Playing netball is my favourite thing in the world.”
She is a talented player, and had been chosen for the provincial under-16 team before her pregnancy. As her voice fills with emotion, she says: “Who could have thought that someone like me could ever do it?
“Perhaps I will have time for playing again this year,” says the teenager, who feels responsible for taking care of her own child and also her siblings and the two foster children.
She fiddles with Me-Jade’s pink headband. “I love the baby very, very much. But I worry about her future too.”
Me-Jade is restless. “We need to get her out of the sun.” Wilsket sounds concerned as she nimbly steps over some building rubble, past decaying rubbish and the sun-baked carcass of a small bird.
“I still need to cover everyone’s school books before tomorrow. It’s the start of a new year and I need to be ready.”
YOUNG MOTHER OF ASTHMATIC CHILDREN FIGHTS FOR
If you follow the coal trucks on Schonland Drive in Emalahleni, you can easily access a multitude of coal waste mountains, just a stone’s throw away from the entrance to the Witbank TB Specialised Hospital. This is where Vosman’s informal coal collectors gather low-grade coal rejects, which fuel many local households when there are power outages in the area.
Although Mbali Mathebula (25) can buy a bag of cheap coal for R40 from these collectors, she cannot use it. Burning either coal or wood would suffocate her children.
Both Princess Nondumiso (8) and Asemahle Angel (4) suffer from severe asthma. Princess has been in and out of hospital since she was a toddler.
Asthma is a common chronic lung disease affecting children living in the Vosman area. It involves inflammation and narrowing of the airways, making it difficult to breathe. Mathebula explains: “An asthma attack starts with shortness of breath and coughing. Princess sometimes gets so weak that she can’t even stand or walk.”
Respiratory failure could occur if the air fails to spread throughout her lungs. This is Mathebula’s worst nightmare – there have been times when she has feared for her child’s life. She sets her alarm to ring three or four times a night so that she can check whether her children are still breathing.
Asemahle (meaning “still beautiful”) was diagnosed with asthma when she was only six months old. “I recognised the signs the moment she struggled with breathing the first time,” Mathebula says. She took the infant to the hospital, where she was admitted for five days and treated with oxygen.
Last year, Princess spent six weeks in hospital, after a severe episode. The siblings, like their mother, were born in Vosman in Emalahleni (the “place of coal”), 120km east of Johannesburg. This is the nation’s most coal-intensive region. Its 12 coalfired power stations (including Kendal, Duvha and Kusile) provide most of SA’s electricity. This coal fleet also contributes to the health-related costs and unfolding climate-related risks in the area.
Mathebula’s one-bedroom house is on the same plot as that of her parents and brother. All three are unemployed. The children’s social grants add up to R920 a month, which has to cover medicine, school fees, travel costs and after-hours hospital visits.
Grey, filthy air from the coal industry
Residents of Vosman and other communities in this industrialised swath of the Highveld are well acquainted with air pollution and its toll on their health. The area has 4.5 million inhabitants and and also houses coal mines, coal-fired power plants, steel and chemical manufacturing plants and petrochemical facilities.
Living so close to the power plants and coal mines, Mathebula and her children are breathing some of the country’s most polluted air. Grey mountains on the horizon are, in fact, the spoil heaps of the region’s coal-intensive economy.
It is mid-morning, and Vosman is covered in a dusty, putrid haze. “It looks like this almost every single day,” Mathebula says. The smog lingers over her house and life. Constantly.
She says they often find their windows, floors and even toilet paper covered in a layer of fine black dust. Inside her house, hairline cracks caused by recent mine blasting in the area are visible.
“In June last year, Princess got sick at around 11pm one evening,” she recalls. “I phoned the ambulance, but they said they could only come to our area at that time to fetch a woman in labour… In the end, they did not come. I had to borrow money for a taxi to rush her to hospital.”
Local healthcare facilities are often inundated with patients and generally under-resourced in terms of the appropriate medicines and equipment.
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