| SAPLER Population Trust | |
| Splendidly Alive People Within Limited Environmental Resources | |
The World Bank states that R does not give money to nations which do not have a population policy. South Africa does not have a population policy. The White Paper on Population which will be debated in parliament later this year will not lead to such a policy. It simply reiterates human rights and development principles which are already stated in the constitution.
SAPLER's next newsletter will come out in August and will criticise this white paper in detail, with the help of SAPLER economist, David Suzman.
Population policies which have worked elsewhere in the world have had two branches:
1. Educational and promotional. This ensures that everyone understands the issues and that the policy is widely accepted. Done properly there would it be no resentment, nor would there be constant references to the past. It would be visionary and forward-looking.
2. Excellent country-wide programmes focusing on a responsible attitude to getting pregnant.
Excellent country-wide family planning programmes, including outreach, in place.
World Population Day is on Friday July 11. SAPLER will be holding an open day from 10am to 5pm on this day and the day following it - Saturday July 12.
We will show our SAPLER videos throughout the day.
Ann Weinberg will talk about SAPLER and RESA and answer questions at 4pm on each day. (Or our new RESA director, David Hirsch. will do this.)
We have about 300 excellent secondhand books, fiction and non-fiction, to sell on behalf of RESA.
In the week of World Population Day, Ann will be on "Total Exposure" on SAfm (104107) at 12.30.
Every year Tatjana van Barman, editor of the advertising magazine, Marketing Mix, organises an advertising competition among young advertisers under the age of 30. The winner goes to an International Advertising Festival at Cannes in France.
Until this year Tatjana made up a product. This year she went to the Wildlife Society and asked them d they had anything on the population problem. She was directed to a box marked "Population".
Finding a SAPLER newsletter and being delighted by our acronym, (Splendidly Alive ... ), she decided we should be the client for the competition.
The target audience: Young low-income groups who buy magazines.
Desired response: "We want South Africa's youth to feel they play an integral part in the quality of life for the next generation by consciously limiting the size of their family.
"Above all the response must be a positive one. The campaign must inspire rather than preach or lecture."
When I phoned for feedback, Tatjana was gloomy: "They are finding it difficult. I've never tried a social marketing topic before. Don't be surprised if there are only had-a-dozen entries."
When I went for the judging, however, I found myself in a room with 146 posters, all advertising SAPLER, and most of them getting the point. Two judges were chatting: "It's a pity this isn't a real organisation." "Ja, we could do with something like this." I laughed, and told them we were real. Sort of. They beamed on me.
The first poster I looked at was blank except for a packet containing a month's supply of contraceptive pills, with the message: "BIRTH CONTROL = EARTH CONTROL".
Another had a row of different kinds of bullet and "PLANNED PARENTHOOD IS A BETTER WAY TO REDUCE THE POPULATION".
Themes which came up often were, "Use your head". and "Less means more". One suggested contraception as a useful tool when "The World has just voted you minister of Health, Education and Finance".
The most compelling message for me was, "The child you don't have could change the world".
The three winners were:
First: A poster, such as we see every day at the street corners, poorly written. The ones that say, "Six children, no job, no house." The ones that make you feel first pity, then exasperation, and then guilt at your exasperation.
The winning poster said:
"ONE CHILD, NICE HOUSE, NICE JOB".
The runners up were:
1. Piles of seeds - sunflower, lentil etc. and underneath:"May these be the only seeds you plant this year".
2. A solid leafless tree with branches. At the bottom the names of two parents. The first two branches: the names of two of the children. The higher branches: the names of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh children. But there was a line drawn across the middle, with all the later children above it, suggesting it would be better if they were never born, or perhaps that the whole tree of life will topple if they are.
South Africa abounds with successful methods of limiting the population while at the same time contributing to the health, well-being and understanding of Individuals.
Unfortunately these methods have never been multiplied so that every South African is reached.
In Winterveldt an 8-year-old girl saw an older girl wearing a SAPLER T - Shirt saying, "Smaller families have larger dreams". (This slogan was chosen by young people in Alex.) We give these T-shirts to young people who have proved themselves as volunteer SAPLER Pioneers.
The child asked for and got an explanation. Since her mother had two children and no husband, but now was seeing another man, the child went home and said:
"Please please Ma, go to the clinic and prevent, you can't feed the two of us properly as it is." The mother took the advice of the child and went to the clinic the next day for family planning.
Cape Flats
A Cape Flats teacher took over a class of mainly fifteen-year-olds. Half of this class had been getting pregnant each year. She told them to pair off into "husband-and-wife" and then each pair got a stuffed pillowslip. This was their "baby". They had to look after him/her night and day. Every day the eager pupils came up with a new disaster which had happened the night before. At the end of that year there were no pregnant fifteen-year-olds.
A Catholic Girls' School
I spoke to a Standard 9 Guidance Teacher at a Catholic Girls' School. She was a committed Cathol herself, and was most worried by the number of girls getting pregnant each year. At first she talked about the spiritual virtue of being a virgin at marriage. The girls were bored and looked out of the window.
One day she came in and said, "How many of you believe in Women's Rights?" Hands shot up. From then on she had their attention and the result was also: no pregnancies any more year after year in that Standard 9 class.
"Women's Rights" talked about in a general sort of way at middle-class conferences do not prevent teenage pregnancy. The approach has to be much more specific.
Influence
Dr Pohl de Villiers heard some years ago that the teenage pregnancy rate in Paarl was the highest in South Africa. He went around saying so to nurses, teachers and social workers, and mentioned it at any sort of gathering. The teenage pregnancy rate started to come down.
Domestic
Whether domestic workers get helped with family planning depends on the philosophy of the employer.
Those who take a straightforward approach simply ask their employees whether they want more children. If they have not yet been introduced to family planning then this is an opportunity to take them.
Some employers do not ask - either out of laziness, or from the unfortunate philosophy of, "We would never dream of interfering in their personal lives."
One woman I spoke to had helped a domestic worker have a sterilisation some time ago.
"I have felt guilty ever since. I'm sure she must hate me." But on enquiring further I found that the woman she had helped was now working in a shop and perfectly happy.
Commercial
Most big firms do see that family planning help is available along with other health promotion initiatives.
A businessman who had put up a factory in rural Venda saw a need for family planning. He equipped a mobile to visit the area around his factory. At first the villagers were suspicious, but gradually they came to accept it.
Men
It is a myth that men are totally against family planning. Very often it is the other way around. When a girlfriend gets pregnant they leave her "because she ought to have been preventing".
One of the first stories I heard after founding SAPLER in 1 990 was from Mary Rose, then with the Institute of Natural Resources. She described a group of illiterate men who had recently been retrenched from their work in Johannesburg. They went back to a deep rural Natal village. Their wives were working at making jewellery for a Paris boutique. The men told them to go on doing this work. They, the men, would now look after the fields - and what is more, the women should go straight away to the family planning clinic.
We don't have to wait for high overall education before introducing men and women to the concept of family planning.
Enterprising rural women have often started projects on their own.
One of the most outstanding projects was however started by an educated outsider who was exiled to her home village of Lenyenye after the death of her partner, Steve Biko. This was Dr Mamphela Ramphele, who empowered the disadvantaged people of Lenyenye to do rural projects such as brick-making, and who started the lthuseng Clinic.
When we went to Ithuseng to do our SAPLER survey, we found Mankuba Ramalepe in charge. Mankuba laughed at our idea of a grassroots family planning project. She had long since trained illiterate grassroots women to hand out contraceptive pills in the villages surrounding Lenyenye.
Mankuba herself made sure that contraceptives were always available. The handing out of contraceptive pills by lay people does not need to be endlessly "researched" in endless pilot projects. It simply needs to be well administered.
Settled communities are ideal for resident helpers. The problem is different with informal settlements around towns, as these are both recent and mobile.
The Bekimpilo answer for such settlements seemed to be excellent. Dr Liz Standing, the founder, has worked all her life in preventive medicine.
The Bekimpilo Trust was set up to do only preventive work in the informal areas around Durban.
Dr Standing knew from long experience that asking people if they want services does not work. People are suspicious and do not really understand what is being asked and offered.
Dr Standing's answer was twofold:
1. She never asked first. She simply set up in a school playground and waited for the curious children to tell their parents.
2. She recruited nurses from outside the area who would be consistent and able to work anywhere they were required, and who could then go home to their own more stable environments.
Bekimpilo was able to prevent 90 percent of the ailments which had previously gone to clinics. Family planning was a key aspect of this, preventing much suffering in mothers and infants.
"Nompilo" means "I give you love, health and care". It was the name chosen by the farm workers around Middelburg (M) after they had been trained by Marina Clarke in basic preventive health care.
The family planning nompilos taught fellow workers about family planning methods. Then they brought those who had decided to use these methods on the right day to the place where the Provincial mobile clinic came.
The most outstanding example of a town that succeeded in both helping individuals and in limiting the population - and thereby once again helping individuals - is Paarl.
In 1970 20 percent of mothers still had 10 or more children. No such mothers existed after 1989.
The success of Dr Pohl de Villiers in Paarl is based on excellent motivation programmes for ante-natal patients, plus excellent follow-up to see that these patients do adhere to the plans they have made during pregnancy. Films in English and Xhosa are used and small group discussions are facilitated.
Dr Pohl de Villiers is also an excellent motivator of his own staff. Sterilisations are available on a 24hour basis, even on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
In 1994 when we did our survey, most cities had municipal family planning and Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg also had family planning done by the Planned Parenthood Association.
Soweto is said to have dropped from the six-child average to the two-child average after municipal services were introduced there.
Although municipal services are available in North Johannesburg, sterilisation is completely absent. Women in Alex who would like a sterilisation have to go on a waiting list, wait months, and then be at the right place on the right day to go to a distant hospital for a sterilisation.
In the Orange Farm informal area South of Johannesburg, Planned Parenthood now have a pilot scheme where lay people hand out contraceptive pills.
The New South Africa could by now have mobiles and grassroots educators everywhere. it is because we lack a department which looks at Overview that this is not done. Curative clinics are fashionable: prevention is not.
The HSRC did a survey some years ago which showed that Transkei women wanted three children but had five.
"Do you know how far those villages are? You will have to swim rivers."
Very well then, we will swim rivers.
When Caroline Argent went to deep rural Natal for our survey, she sometimes had to leave her car and climb hills on a footpath. At those villages she found women who had eight children but who said their ideal family size was four. Very well then, we will climb hills.
Having listed the things which have been done, I would now like to suggest something which could be done.
When we reached the Northern Province, while doing our survey, we were told the same two things over and over again:
"People here believe what the radio says. If you suggest something which they have already heard on the radio they nod and agree "
And, "People here will do what President Mandela says they should do."
The ANC leaders could swing the population debate around within months if they stopped being so afraid of "the women". These are of course not all women. They are the women who have been over-influenced by demographic jargon and politically correct cliches, and have therefore ignored the practical grassroots things which could be done if clear leadership was given.
If President Mandela said, "Let there be no teenage pregnancies by the year 2000," then there would be no teenage pregnancies by the year 2000.
Advertisers, the media, churches, teachers, social workers, the parents of teenagers, and above all the teenagers themselves would be focused and galvanised into making the president's wish come true.
The president himself would be rewarded by the nation having fewer needy toddlers, and the nation would immediately become more workable.
This is because most South Africans are young. There is a Youth Bulge. Therefore reaching them with a "no pregnancy" message would have a direct effect on limiting the population.
SAPLER's overall aim is to stabilise the population of Southern Africa while at the same time contributing to the health, well-being and understanding of individuals.
We are a Human Rights organisation. We offer maximum respect for the full humanity of all. We do not, for example, approve of persuading a woman to have a sterilisation when she has just given birth to a baby. Any such decision has to be made in the ante-natal period, with time given for reconsideration.
RESA stands for Reach Every South African (or Southern African) with free and friendly family planning and Reach Every South African teenager with help in making a workable and ethical plan for their sex lives.
We do pilot projects in these fields. However our main goal is to "Win the argument", as David Hirsch puts it. We need to persuade the media, the provinces and the government that money and leadership put into this field will not only prevent disaster but will promote a workable society. We believe that at some time in the future we could have a society where not everyone lives in extravagant luxury, but where everyone has a chance of being "splendidly alive".
"Prevention is boring," said Dr Nicholas Crisp, at the time a well respected Northern Province doctor. He had taught nurse-aides to do contraceptive injections, which was illegal. But as Mankuba said, "in the Northern Province we have to find our own ways. It's no good waiting for help."
We can make prevention less boring. Our SAPLER mobile is close to becoming a reality. To discourage theft and encourage debate we will have messages on it. In large letters: WE PREVENT.
Plus: "Save yourself, save the planet" and "One child, nice job, nice house," and "The child you don't have could save the world".
Surprisingly, we don't talk about the environment when helping someone understand family planning.
Time for a Grandmother to Rebel
On television a grandmother told her story. She had brought up her granddaughter from infancy. When the girl became pregnant at fourteen the grandmother did her UBUNTU thing and took the baby and said nothing. Her granddaughter went back to school.
Soon she was pregnant a second and then a third time.
"It is time for us to speak out," said the grandmother. "We have forgotten to tell these children that such behaviour is not acceptable."
David Hirsch, our new Executive Director of the RESA Project has found an excellent piggyback situation in Palaborwa.
'The Palabora Foundation's Mission is to promote and support the holistic development of disadvantaged people and communities... In all its work, the Foundation takes a long-term view of community developments
Like so many development and environmental organisations however, the foundation had not up to now considered family planning outreach as an essential goal. What they do have is an Early Learning Centres Project for pre-school children.
David Hirsch went to Palaborwa and met Rose Venter, who is very keen on our idea of a SAPLER mobile together with grassroots educators. The infrastructure exists. We can now build our side of it.
A young pre-adolescent girl in a soapie was painting a face on an egg. "It's boring," she said, "I'm not even interested in boys."
The SAPLER mobile could pick up surplus eggs from farmers and deliver them to High Schools. The children could paint faces on the eggs and then have to take them to and from school every day for a week. Their babies.