wfn.org | ACNS AIDS projects show 'hope in despair'

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     ACNS 4097     |	  ACO	  |	20 JANUARY 2005

AIDS projects show 'hope in despair'

TEAC sees the local church in action against AIDS during its South African 
consultation

By Mike McCoy
19 January 2006

Photographs for this item are available here:
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/40/75/acns4097.cfm

Kempton Park, South Africa. - The working group Theological Education for 
the Anglican Communion (TEAC) took time out of its meeting in South Africa 
this week to visit local church-based HIV/AIDS projects, and to see some of 
the realities that theological education must address.

TEAC member Elizabeth Appleby of Brisbane, Australia said afterwards that 
the churches' work alongside people living with AIDS was a sign of "hope in 
the midst of despair" because it showed unconditional acceptance of people 
when they were most vulnerable.

The 34-member body gathered on 14 January to draft its proposals for the 
reshaping of Anglican theological education, as mandated by the Primates in 
2002. The TEAC meeting ends on 21 January.

"Servants of the community"

Their programme is not all talk, however. On Wednesday 18 January TEAC 
members spent a morning with two community-based projects run by Anglican 
churches in the Diocese of the Highveld, east of Johannesburg, and visited 
a Roman Catholic job-creation scheme that includes many people living with 
AIDS.

The visits were arranged by the Revd Marlene Rodda, a deacon in the diocese 
and coordinator of the diocese's social responsibility programmes. Victor 
Matshikiza, a retired school principal who works extensively in HIV/AIDS 
programmes, also accompanied the group.

The first stop was at All Souls' Parish in Tsakane, a major centre for 
home-based care and HIV/AIDS counselling, and a day care centre for 
children affected by AIDS.

The parish's Tsepo-Hope Project - endorsed and supported by the South 
African Departments of Health and Social Welfare - was described as the 
"flagship" of non-governmental HIV/AIDS programmes in South Africa.

Project coordinator Ms Flower Boyi told TEAC that the centre's main 
activity was to send volunteer home-based care workers (HCWs) into the 
community, both to visit people in the advanced stages of AIDS-related 
illnesses each day, and to help their families to care for them.

Parish-based counsellors are trained to work alongside the HCWs, and food 
parcels are taken each month to needy families.

At the parish church, a day care centre feeds and cares for a large group 
of young children whose parents have died from AIDS-related diseases, or 
who are themselves HIV-positive.

Welcoming the TEAC group to All Souls - a church building whose interior is 
strikingly decorated with African art and artefacts - the Rector, the Revd 
Ziphozonke Mnyandu, said the church's role was to be servants of the wider 
community.

"AIDS reveals how we deal with each other"

A few kilometres down the road, TEAC members visited the 
Kopanang-Sithand'izingane Centre run by nuns of the Roman Catholic 
Dominican Community. Begun in 2002 in response to the 80% unemployment rate 
in the area, the centre trains women in sewing, embroidery, paper-making, 
and work with beads. It also does organic vegetable market-farming.

It also houses a day care centre for HIV/AIDS-impacted children.

Coordinator Sister Sheila Flynn spoke passionately of the challenge that 
HIV/AIDS poses not just to the church's pastoral care but also to its
theology.

"We need to walk with the suffering, without always being able to 'fix' 
it," she said.

She told TEAC that 75% of the world's HIV-infected people are in Southern 
Africa, and that half of the South Africans who are now 15 years old will 
be dead before they are 30.

"AIDS challenges us to do theology that is rooted in human dignity, because 
it reveals how we deal with each other," she said. "Theology is 'God-talk' 
- so our theology must be rooted in the reality of people's lives."

"How can we not believe in God?"

TEAC's final visit was to the Bambanani Community Care Centre in Dukathole, 
in the industrial zone of Germiston. The centre is a diocesan project that 
serves a community of 15,000 people living in an informal settlement 
squeezed into a small area between the local factories.

An unemployment rate of between 80% and 90% means that most of the people 
in Dukathole live in extreme poverty, and HIV-infection rates are high.

In 2001 a local woman who was herself HIV-positive, Margaret "Numsa" 
Sikhwari, began an AIDS-awareness and home-care centre in a shack behind 
her house in Dukathole. With church and other funding, the centre is now 
housed in a converted container opposite the local primary school.

Members of TEAC were divided into groups, and accompanied the centre's 
home-based care workers into the homes of several of the 150 people they 
visit every week. Their main job was to deliver food parcels, but in some 
cases the TEAC visitors were asked to pray with those they had gone to see 
- including HIV-positive infants, young parents with advanced AIDS, and 
bed-ridden grandmothers.

Afterwards, Marlene Rodda told TEAC members of a mother whose young child 
had just been buried after dying from AIDS-related diseases. A friend 
asked, "How can you believe in God when all this is happening?"

"How can you not believe in God at a time like this?" she replied.

"Be critical of current realities"
In a time of reflection back at the conference centre, TEAC members agreed 
that their visits had shown the importance of theological education that 
helped Anglicans to go beyond simply dealing with urgent needs, and to 
analyse and critique current realities such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Bishop Simon of Chiwanga of Tanzania summed up the day's visits: "What we 
did today was an example of good theological education: we engaged and 
dealt with real issues in a situation, and then reflected on it together."

* Mike McCoy is Corresponding Secretary to ANITEPAM and a course 
coordinator with the TEE College of Southern Africa. He is serving the 
South African meeting of TEAC as its chaplain.

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