The African Aids pandemic has largely been forgotten by the world media. But one charity is still working with those most affected by the virus – the children. Jim Entwistle reports.

"Only undertakers and weeds prosper up here,” says South African photographer Cedric Nunn as we drive through the vast cemetery overlooking the city of Pietermaritzburg.

Some of the graves have wooden crosses holding grimly onto the thin soil. A few are marked with pieces of throwaway stone, names etched crudely into the surface, while many others remain unmarked. On all sides, fast-growing shrubbery encroaches on the only section of the cemetery which is not yet overgrown.

There are no mourners or fresh flowers. These are the graves of South Africa’s forgotten people.

One in five people in the country are infected with the HIV virus.

Pietermaritzburg’s cemetery, like those all across the country, is feeling the strain of the pandemic. The virus has taken a foothold in the sprawling ‘informal settlements’ that have sprung up around South African cities since the collapse of apartheid; a migrant surge from the townships and rural communities to which the black population had been bound for generations. The lack of education and investment, and the population’s unwillingness to accept the scale of the problem, has led to marginalised colonies like these becoming hotbeds of HIV.

Thousands of people live in the informal settlement of Dambuza on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. A 15-minute drive from the centre of the former colonial city takes you there – from a thriving urban hub to an incoherent sprawl of ad hoc homes made of breeze blocks and mud. Living in one of the houses, overlooking the valley, are 18-yearold Thulisile and her 16-year-old brother Sibusiso.

Since the death of their parents three years ago – their mother is thought to have died of an Aids-related illness, nothing is known about the father – the pair have assumed responsibility for their five-year-old sister Sinenhlanhla and Thulisile’s two-year-old son Sumukelo. Instead of rallying round, the family’s surviving relatives actually made life more difficult for the youngsters.

“There was a lot of fighting about who would look after us, so I decided I would look after the kids myself,” Thulisile says, straightening her son’s woollen jumper.

“Then they refused to give us food, so we had to apply for grants.”

Shunned by her relatives, Thulisile at times finds herself on the periphery of her community; she and her family have become victims of the destructive stigma of HIV and Aids. Vandals have targeted the family home, a tiny but obviously wellloved building with lace curtains hung in the windows and a border of marigolds running along its front wall. But the windows are cracked, and Thulisile says nuisance callers hammer on the door late at night.

“There are a lot of clashes in the community,” she says. “There is a lot of gossip which gets people fighting.

People are just being horrible, they just do it and walk away.”

She speaks with a sadness in her voice completely at odds with her youthful appearance. “I don’t have a lot of friends because I spend a lot of time in this house,” she says. “We cannot get along because of my situation.

I used to have friends before.”

I ask if she misses her friends. “No,”

she replies.

On the other side of the city, in a different but no less deprived neighbourhood, nine-year-old Siphumelele plays with his cousin outside his grandmother’s home.

Siphumelele was found to be HIV positive when he was three, having being infected through his mother.

Both his parents died of Aids in 2004.

Siphumelele, his 15-year-old sister Mosley, and six-year-old cousin Nontobeka live with their grandmother Thoko. The 55-year-old suffers from chronic ulcers, diabetes and asthma.

Life is obviously a struggle.

“It is very hard for me at my age as I have to give them love as a mother, father and grandmother,” she says. “I can’t afford to give them everything they need and, if their parents were around, they would be able to. It makes my heart very sad to think I can’t provide all their needs like clothes and food.”

As with Thulisile and her family, Thoko came to the attention of the Christian Aid-funded charity Thandanani through one of its 140 community volunteers. The charity stepped in, built the family a new home, and helped them with access to grants and overseeing the planting of a vegetable patch. Their old house still stands alongside their new property, a permanent reminder of the abject hardship of the past.

Its mud walls are bowed, slumped and cracked. The roof is supported only by a few rotten timbers. In contrast, their new home is immaculate.

It has a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a toilet. Outside, the vegetable patch bursts with growth.

“This has been a blessing,” says Thoko. “It has changed my life. For the first time I have running water and a sanitary system. My life has improved and so has my health.”

The future for Siphumelele had looked bleak, but thanks to the charity’s intervention he is now on a daily course of drugs, which when supported by a healthy, home-grown diet, will give him every chance of leading a long life.

Driving back towards Dambuza, the tin-roofed homes stretch out to the horizon. Knock on any of these doors and you can be sure the family will have lost someone, a friend or a relative, to HIV and Aids. But through the work of Thandanani and its army of volunteers, the taboo is beginning to lose its grip.

The charity works with 2,050 children, 90 per cent of whom have been orphaned by HIV. It has taken years of hard work, thousands of deaths, but with the help of the charity the communities are beginning to come to terms with the virus that has indiscriminately torn them apart.

Thandanani charity worker Nhlanhlan Ndlovu says: “Ten years ago, you couldn’t go into a household and ask about HIV without offending people. But there has been a change of mindset and the degree of acceptance is increasing. Although, instead of calling it Aids, we find people using euphemisms. We hear people calling it ‘that dreaded illness which kills the young people’.”

Night falls in Dambuza. Large parts of the colony have no electricity so when the sun disappears behind the hills, the darkness is absolute.

It is about 8.30pm. In the thousands of ramshackle homes scattered across the hillsides, people are readying themselves for bed. In the valley below, radiating a fuzzy neon aura, the city carries on regardless.

Put a family back together All over the world, poverty, HIV and injustice are leaving many children orphaned and tearing families apart. Christian Aid works every day to help bring these families back together. By making a donation to Christian Aid this Christmas you could help to pay for adult community carers who will supply food parcels, clothes and emotional support for HIV orphans in South Africa. Just £20 could buy a food parcel that feeds four children for a month. To make a donation visit christianaid.org.uk/christmas or call 0808-000-6006 or send a donation to Christian Aid, Freepost, London SE1 7YY.