The granny revolution

It started with three South African grandmothers sharing their grief at the loss of their children and supporting each other to care for their orphaned grandchildren. Five years later, their group in Alexandra, a Johannesburg township, has grown to 40 and spawned dozens of others spanning two continents, sparking what some are calling a 'granny revolution'.

On the opening day of the International AIDS Conference in Toronto last month, the three original Alexandra grandmothers led a march of 300 women through the streets of the city to raise awareness about the growing number of poor grandmothers who are parenting their grandchildren after the deaths of their own children from AIDS-related illnesses.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 40-60 percent of the estimated 13 million AIDS orphans live with their grandmothers. Instead of enjoying a restful retirement, these women are struggling to care for AIDS-afflicted family members and their children on meagre incomes, often with little or no support.

UN Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis told the recent AIDS conference in Toronto, Canada, that Africa's grandmothers were "the unsung heroes of the continent" and called for social welfare programmes "that will recognise these essential caregivers' contributions to society as legitimate and difficult labour, and offer the guarantee of sustainable incomes."

To this end, the Stephen Lewis Foundation launched the 'Grandmothers to Grandmothers' campaign in March, to clone some of the benefits of pairing the Alexandra grannies with a group of 10 grandmothers in Wakefield, a small community in Ottawa, Canada.

In 2004 a Wakefield resident urged a local church minister to invite his mother, Nina Minde, to speak about the year she had just spent in South Africa. Minde had worked with Rose Letwaba, a children's psychiatric nurse, to form the Alexandra support group. On a visit to Canada, Letwaba told the congregation she had discovered that many of the children missing appointments were being cared for by overwhelmed grandmothers.

"My experience was that not much attention was given to the grandparents, because the perception is that adults can deal with the grief on their own," Letwaba told PlusNews. "But I regarded them as silent victims of AIDS, so I started the group with three grannies and by end of that year I had 15."

Listen to Alexandra granny, Magdeline Ramakobo talk about her trip to Canada and her relationship with her 12-year-old grandson, Moses.

She told the congregation about women like Magdaline Ramakobo, who lost her daughter and month-old grandchild to AIDS a year after losing her son to the disease, and was struggling to cope with her bereavement as well as caring for her grandson, Moses, 10, when the school referred her to Letwaba.

Letwaba introduced Ramakobo to two other women in similar circumstances, and by the time Letwaba came to Canada they had been joined by 30 others and were meeting once a week.

Norma Geggie, a retired nurse, approached Letwaba and suggested forming a local group to partner with the group in Alex, and long-distance friendships quickly formed. With support from local businesses and other community groups, the Wakefield Grannies organised concerts and other fundraisers, collecting C$10,000.

"When we were there, it was as if we'd been with them for a long time," said Ramakobo. "We come from different places but I think they know our pain better than anybody because some of them, they did lose loved ones. If you've lost someone you loved and you meet another one, you get connected quickly."

Ramakobo's Wakefield counterpart, Brenda Rooney, agreed: "We're all mothers, we all understand the capacity for terrible loss and some of us have suffered great losses."

Both groups have benefited from the connection. Rooney believes it has helped balance some of the AIDS-related stigma the Alex grannies face in their communities. "The point is that someone outside knows about the affect of AIDS on the family and they're still working for them, still caring," she said. "It shows the outside world is not passing judgement."

For the Wakefield Grannies, there's the joy that comes out of doing something to help, even if in a small way. "My generation is the first generation of women that have been able to have families and careers, and we're now coming to retirement with a different frame of reference. We want it to be meaningful," Rooney said.

Geggie believes the 'Grandmother to Grandmother' campaign is successfully matching the long-overlooked needs of African grandmothers with the desire of people to provide meaningful assistance. "You hear about tragedies all over the world but it never becomes personal like this has become."

For Ramakobo, the meeting with other African grandmothers in Toronto was significant: "There are others who've got more [problems] than us. You'll find a person has seven kids and there's no income, no pension, no help. If you meet other grannies, you share ideas, you talk about your experience, they talk about theirs. You gain something from them."

Forty Canadian granny groups attended the gathering in Toronto where they met 100 African women representing granny support groups from 11 different countries. According to Micol Zarb, Communications Director of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, this is only the beginning. As the Foundation expands its support of African grandmothers, Canadian grandmothers are forming new groups all over the country, and the funds they raise will support grandmothers throughout sub-Saharan Africa to form support groups, grow community gardens, pay for school fees and uniforms and start income- generation projects.

"There's this unbelievable resonance," Rooney commented on the growth of the movement. "We think we have to be big and powerful to do something, but that's not true."