In 2012, Millicent Manana established a remarkable day care centre called Sinakho. It catered for special needs children, aged seven and below, and was housed at Andrew Moyake Primary School in Fingo.
In 2012, Millicent Manana established a remarkable day care centre called Sinakho. It catered for special needs children, aged seven and below, and was housed at Andrew Moyake Primary School in Fingo.
Manana was inspired to start the school when her daughter’s special needs were not met and she struggled to fit into a “normal school”.
“I didn’t want to accept it,” Manana told Grocott’s Mail in 2012. “I said to myself: Hlanganani may not speak but she knows what she’s doing, she’s still very clever. But she needed to be with other children like her, where she could get more specialised attention.”
The vibrant pink and purple centre, which housed two classrooms and accommodated 15 children, filled a gaping hole in special needs learning in Grahamstown. The project was funded by Rob Beer of Beer Properties, who is also chairman of the Eluxolweni Children’s Shelter.
Beer was interested in Sinakho because he has a brother living with cerebral palsy. The day care received monthly instalments from him until November 2013, when he pulled the funding due to some irregularities. Parents and staff members watched as the school, once a beacon of hope, spiralled into disarray after rumours of financial irregularities forced the donor to pull out.
“There was mismanagement and funds were misallocated," Beer told Grocott's Mail. "There were also problems with the staff and under those circumstances I was not prepared to continue funding it.”
Former Sinakho staff member Nomalungisa Maloni said Sinakho was always going to struggle because of its inadequate governance structures, rare parent-teacher meetings and the fact that staff members were occasionally cut out of school events.
As a result, Sinakho had no functioning stove or fridge in the kitchen by the time it closed last November.
Anne*, a concerned mother of a child who was at Sinakho, said she has been left with little schooling options for her child in Grahamstown since the school closed.
James* is six years old and has autism, cerebral palsy and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).
“It was really upsetting because there is no other place for him to go,” Anne said. “And it wasn’t just my son, there were lots of other people that were affected. Some of those children stay at home while their parents go to work and there’s nowhere else for them to go, which is really sad.”
Kuyasa Special Needs School also offers facilities for special needs students in Grahamstown, but it only caters for older children.
Like many of the other affected parents, Anne is facing a dilemma about whether to send James away to special need schools in Port Elizabeth or East London, or to place him in a local crèche where she feels his needs will not be adequately met.
“We’ve [Anne and her husband] tried for years now to get jobs in PE, but we can’t. If we have to, we’ll have to send him to boarding school,” she said. James is now attending a local crèche that normally caters for children up to the age of four. Anne is, however, concerned by the lack of therapy and stimulation for her child in the crèche but accepts that this is the best option at the moment.
“He can go to a crèche or stay at home, but what stimulation is he getting?”
Other parents have taken their children to Sibanye, a new special needs day care centre that Maloni, who worked at Sinakho, opened in early August. Medical specialists in Grahamstown are also concerned about the lack of allied medical professionals in schools.
“One of the reasons why I was frustrated at Kuyasa was that there would be vacant posts but because of the inefficiency of the structures of the government, these posts don’t get filled,” said Ghida Bernard, an occupational therapist in Grahamstown.
Amanda Edwards, a local speech therapist, also said there were structural limitations with government institutions. Both Bernard and Edwards work in the private sector due to the difficulties they’ve experienced with state schools and hospitals.
“It’s a multi-layered problem,” Edwards said. “There are these people who are willing to work and these kids that are willing to learn but there is this large gap with this bureaucratic nightmare.”
Although there seems to be a lack of special needs schools in Grahamstown, Bernard and Edwards said there has been an increase in the number of specialised experts in the private sector in recent years.
“For a small town, there is a lot [of specialists]available for children. There are options,” added Edwards. She also pointed out the increase in early diagnosis of disorders such as autism and ADHD amongst children in Grahamstown.
“It’s quite close to our hearts. Both of us would be working in schools/ hospitals because of the communities that we’d have access to and the children who really need help.”
*Names have been changed to protect their right to privacy.
