Pride for all lives in Africa Unite

Frans Tshwaane describes himself as a spoilt child from Soweto. His mother and sister both work in the medical field. "Growing up, money was never an issue" he says. In 2000, after a fall-out with his sister while a college student, Frans moved to Cape Town. He soon realised that making it on his own without family and friends around was not that easy. He spent eight months living in the streets. A little further down the line, he started working as a junior chef for the Salvation Army. It was during this time that he educated himself about graphic design and web publishing. Since November 2007 he has been working at Africa Unite as a multi-media manager.

Africa Unite started in 2003 as an Idasa initiative. It is founded on the premise that human rights apply to everyone and may never be compromised. In the short four years of its existence, it has successfully started six programmes: An HIV/Aids centre in Guguletu, called "The Baobab Centre", a life skills programme, job placement centre, senior citizen programme, a saving scheme called Sisonke and an extra-mural study programme for science, maths and accounting at high school level. Africa Unite currently receives financial support from DKA and the Department of Social Development.

Through the Baobab Centre, the organisation reaches Aids orphans; some of them infected by HIV themselves. The children receive food vouchers and peer education about HIV. The Africa Unite staff passionately describes the programme's objective as "giving kids a sense of belonging to their community and instilling a sense of pride in them. We show them that if you want to you can overcome poverty". Children enter the programme at 5 years of age and leave when they turn 21. At that point, they can become part of Africa Unite's life-skills programme. The life skills programme provides youth who are unable to find jobs with relevant life skills. Once they have completed the course, they become part of Africa Unite's job placement centre, which assists them in finding employment. The profile of available candidates is sent to a number of companies on their database. Recently, Eskom has agreed to take on two of the young men on the database.

The senior citizen programme seeks to integrate youth and the elderly by involving the youth in assisting senior citizens. The older generation receives Christmas gifts and is being taken on outings to places that they have not been able to access during the Apartheid years - and which many of them have thus never seen before.

Together with Persy Kakwindi, Frans Tshwaane forms Africa Unite's media department. Both are extraordinarily hard-working: even though their official work only starts at 9am, they usually reach the office by 7:30. Often they do not go home before 9pm. Asked about their reasons, both say they want to set an example for others. Their aim is to prove that the stereotype of people working for NGOs loafing around without doing much work is just that: "a stereotype". At the same time, both men provide the stories of their life as additional motivation - which coincidentally show some parallels.

Persy is a Zimbabwean teacher and came to Cape Town as a refugee. Like Frans, he lived in the streets for a while. He says he joined Africa Unite in 2006, as he had nothing to do. "Because I didn't have a place to stay and was a refugee, I asked Africa Unite, if they didn't have something to do", he explains. Like many of Africa Unite's staff, he started working with the organisation as a volunteer. He now trains many of their staff, as the 43 year old has 20 years experience in the teaching field. Persy proudly reports that none of the youth involved in the HIV and senior citizen programme have fallen pregnant.

Africa Unite's initial programme is a human rights programme. Each year in January, individuals from the Eastern Cape and various places in the Western Cape gather in Malmesbury to receive training in how to conduct human rights workshops focusing mainly on migrants rights as a means to tackle the prominent problem of xenophobia. Equipped with the necessary training material they then go back to their respective communities and conduct workshops themselves - in schools, churches and other available structures.

To assist migrants themselves, Africa Unite has also initiated a programme to assist refugees in becoming integrated into their communities. Many educated people from other African countries struggle to find work in their respective fields. It is for this reason that you find people with degrees in Statistics working as waiters in local restaurants. Africa Unite recruits such individuals and employs them as teachers providing extra-mural education to high school students in maths, science and accounting - the subjects with the lowest pass rate in South Africa. Every Saturday, youths from five schools in Cape Town's townships receive extra education in these subjects - and the teachers are getting paid the amount they would have made had they been working in their "regular" jobs. The children are also provided with food and are taken on outings to places of relevance, such as the MTN Science Centre, the Koeberg power plant or the University of Stellenbosch, where they can access lab facilities for practical experiments that their schools do not have the equipment for. In one of the schools the matric pass rate has increased from 23% to 59% after the introduction of the extra classes.

A major challenge the programme is faced with is that it targets children who had been struggling with these subjects. It emerged, though, that not all of the schools' regular teachers themselves were familiar with the textbook contents. Attempts to include these teachers in the Saturday sessions have failed. There is little interest from the teachers' side to attend activities that they are not getting paid for. It thus means that those children who are not part of the extra classes lose out on learning about the complete maths, science or accounting curriculum. Africa Unite is currently liaising with the Department of Education, who has expressed a desire for the organisation to cover the complete curriculum in all three of these subjects.

Finally, Africa Unite has initiated "Sisonke", a cooperative bank, which encourages youth and the elderly to save rather than to spend money on expensive cell phones and other gadgets. After saving with Sisonke for six months individuals qualify for a micro loan provided by the South African Micro Apex Fund (SAMAF), a programme initiated by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Asked why they have such a wide variety of programmes, Persy says "We are a supermarket. We give you everything. We want to create a better society. If you get a job, for example, but don't save, you still have a problem." Africa Unite's goal is to create a full human being who has been granted and adheres to all human rights.

Given the multitude of programmes, it comes as no surprise that Frans and Persy have such long working hours. As a team they are responsible for all design, typing and printing work at Africa Unite. Persy works extensively with government and international donors, as he is also involved in fundraising for the programmes. Frans, on the other hand, does the creative writing, which is then in turn edited by Persy. Asked about his role he says "I keep the spirit up in the office. I drink all the coffee and eat all the bread."

To top it all, Persy and Frans do not receive any money for their work through Africa Unite itself. They have their own design company, which is housed at Africa Unite's offices. When we ask them how Africa Unite ensures they are not prioritising their private work, which brings in their money, over their work for Africa Unite, we receive blank stares. "Our work for Africa Unite always has priority", Frans explains. Why? "Look at where we are coming from" is his answer. It is very motivating to see individuals like Frans and Persey who do not see money as the most important driving force.