It is cold today in Munsieville. It’s a little inconvenient for me because when I came from London a few days ago, I packed a couple of jumpers, but neither are really warm enough to fend off the icy blast of the frozen winds blowing across the higher plains of Gauteng Province. Inconvenient, but not exactly life-threatening, because I will get into my car, drive fifteen minutes to Key West Mall in Krugersdorp, and buy something more adequate.
Poverty is many things, but perhaps most damaging of all is that it removes choice altogether or exchanges it with dread dilemmas. I have the choice of sitting huddled up to the radiator in my room, or popping into the lounge at the nearby Sterkfontein Heritage Lodge to sit in front of their roaring log fire. Or I could choose to stay cold, knowing that it will just be a temporary discomfort. But no, I will exercise my choice, and transfer a few Rand from my credit card to Edgars menswear department and walk out snug – problem solved. I have choice!
But this is a bad day for many in Munsieville, and millions in others in informal settlements across South Africa. They also have a choice today. They can either suffer the freezing bitterness of this sudden cold snap and hope for the best, or they can turn to the available methods of heating their shack homes in the knowledge that by tonight, their home could well be reduced to ashes, or their children and old people could be dead from carbon monoxide, or have choked on acrid smoke.
As I write this blog post, countless people in the township are frantically striving, not for a better future, but just for survival. Frail elderly people; people living with AIDS whose immune systems are shot; babies born just hours ago – and those who care for them, locked into a battle just to cope with temperatures that would scarcely draw a comment in London or New York.
Many will light coal fires in buckets and place them in the door of their shack. Others will use light fires of wood inside their homes. A few may dare to climb to overhead power lines to steal electricity through un-insulated wires fed through their tin roofed shack to feed rusty, deadly appliances. Others will burn paraffin on stoves set on rickety stands so easily knocked over by toddlers playing in the darkness of the tiny living space of their home.
The South African government estimates that 3,000 people die each year from paraffin-related accidents alone, with many times that number dying in fires caused by other factors. Over 80,000 children, twenty-three percent of whom are under three year of age, are poisoned or injured by paraffin annually!
Cold weather may be inconvenient to many of us, but it is killer in the townships, villages and informal settlements of South Africa. That is why shack safety has become such an important focus in our quest to help create safe communities where even the most vulnerable children can grow into healthy, productive adults.
Rusting shacks will never be ideal places to raise children but, with the extent of the housing crisis in Africa, it is hard to see a time when they will no longer exist. But our passion is to demonstrate that when householders take responsibility for their children, there are many simple, low cost ways of making them safe, eliminating many dangers and reducing other risks.
Our partner, GlaxoSmithKline, is working shoulder-to-shoulder with us and the Munsieville community to introduce a far-reaching transformation which changes the culture that tolerates dangerous living conditions. At the end of 2011, a team from the company helped launch the campaign and is returning at the end of 2012 for another high-profile, community-wide initiative to raise awareness of the risks and introduce families to the positive choices they have. Also, Daphne Van, who works with GSK in Canada , is now on loan from the company, working tirelessly to engage the community, change attitudes and identify the specific areas most likely to lead to rapid and sustained change.
On days like this, the people of Munsieville need heat. May the day soon arrive then they are no longer compelled to dice with death just to stay warm!
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