Children

Debbie founded the Little Saints Pre-School on the Kensington/Bez Valley border in 2001. The school is run in partnership with the Bethany shelter for abused women in Bertrams. Madina started the Bismillah Pre-School in Bez Valley in 2003.   Both schools adapt themselves to the realities of the neighbourhood.

The schools take children from birth to six years of age. There are 88 children at the Little Saints Pre-School and 90 at Bismillah. Little Saints opens its doors at 07.00 in the morning and closes at 17.30.  Bismillah is open from 6.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Afterschool care is offered to primary school children.

Most Bismillah parents are single mothers, generally domestic workers or street traders. More and more Little Saints parents, which is less than a kilometer away, are single fathers or from families where fathers are doing more of the parenting than mothers. 

Children at the schools live in Hillbrow, Yeoville, Jeppestown, Bez Valley, Bertrams, Malvern, Kensington. The majority of children at the Bismillah school live in Bez Valley.

Communication is a daily challenge. Many of the children do not speak English or any other South African language, and nor do their parents.  The children are from South Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, DRC, Kenya, Malawi, and India. They come and go, generally because parents lose their jobs or get evicted from houses and are forced to relocate.

“We live in an environment where people struggle to survive. Either there is a single mother who needs to work or we have a lot of single fathers in this school because the mothers are into drugs or alcohol so they are not involved in the child’s life... So you need to be able to educate the child to take care of themselves …If you can empower the child to feel confident enough to speak up if they are not comfortable with what is going on, then you have given them a skill for life,” Debbie says.

She stresses that a parent’s occupation has nothing to do with good parenting. The father of a child who is no longer at the school was clearly a drug dealer, she tells me. He attended all the talks and meetings at the school and implemented what he learned, with very positive consequences for his child.

Single mothers work very long hours and are too exhausted to be good mothers. “There is a lot of neglect,” Madina says. “The child will come dirty, empty bag, crying and not happy at school. There is no love, no attention.  Most are living in backrooms and rooms in houses, sharing rooms. Sometimes there are eight families in one house…  I have one child right now where the mother is going under to depression because of her condition. Her rent is high. She is selling on the streets in town. She comes from Congo.  I am looking at sponsoring the child because this is someone you can see is not lying. This is a reality…She comes in tears, she can’t pay.”

Pre-schools in the area  support one another and share resources. “We speak to one another. Debbie donates extra toys and invites us to functions and courses. She does a lot for the area,” Madina says. 

School fees are not sufficient to cover the cost of food for the children and salaries.

“People must open their hearts. A lot of people are struggling… In the last two years things have got worse and worse. Most end up sending their children to the villages because they can’t afford to pay,” Madina says.

If you would like to sponsor a child or make a donation to one of these pre-schools, please contact me and I will facilitate this (melodyemmett@gmail.com)

Public principle and the individuation of conscience

The current owner of the Juno Street house in Kensington has built a garage blocking access to the abandoned mining cave which the Foster Gang set up as an emergency hide-away after a spate of violent robberies across the Reef in the early history of Johannesburg.

Foster was a charismatic psychopathic personality who, together with two members of his Gang, Johan Maxim, and Carl Mezar, wrought havoc in the small white community of his day. The drama was widespread and struck at the lives of a diverse group of South Africans.

The Gang was wanted for a string of robberies and the murder of three policemen and a passer-by, but nine other people also died. They included a Post Master who committed suicide after Foster and his Gang had robbed the Post office – he had been fiddling the petty cash and feared exposure; a doctor who was on his way to the Springs hospital to assist with an emergency operation; and the great gentleman-general and man of principle, Koos de la Rey, whose car was fired upon by the police, after his driver drove through a road block, believing it to be for his employer. **See note

Most tragic was the scene which played itself out outside the cave in Kensington in September 1914. The police had set up roadblocks around the city and surrounded the cave. A huge crowd had gathered.

The three men decided they would not be taken alive. Mezar was the first to die when Maxim killed him with a single shot. Maxim killed himself.

Foster had the extreme charismatic control of the psychopath, a fact which the Senior Police Officer understood well.  Foster asked for his wife, Peggy, the baby, and his parents and two sisters to be brought to the cave, promising that once he had seen them, he would hand himself over.

The Senior Officer refused to allow Foster’s wife and child to go inside the cave, protesting that he would kill them. Finally, under pressure from Inspector Edward Leach, he reluctantly agreed. 

For a while it seemed the idea would work, but after about an hour, Foster’s family stumbled out of the cave with the baby but without Peggy.

The crowd waited in silence and then a shot rang out, followed by two others.

Tormented by his culpability in the death of Peggy Foster, Inspector Edward Leach, committed suicide a few days later.

The Foster Gang saga is a drama of great classic theatre. It raises questions around sanity and insanity; the challenge of public responsibility; the dynamics of money, charisma and power; and relationships between men and women.

Perhaps this is one of the last occasions in which greater values played themselves out in a public event in the lives of ordinary people on the Witwatersrand. Perhaps it is a story of the end of public principle and the beginning of the individuation of conscience.

**They were on their way to meet the Boer rebels hoping to take advantage of the outbreak of World War One to liberate the old republics. De la Rey, personally, did not feel this wise, but in conscience, and out of loyalty, felt obliged to go and engage with his compatriots on the matter.