Chron: In Africa, emotions run high away from the court

I remember the Chronicle reporting before on this school that the NBA and Dikembe support, but it's still very moving. This is probably more of a Hangout, or even NBA Dish piece, but whatever.

Sept. 13, 2004, 1:40AM

Emotions run high away from the court
With AIDS plaguing Africa, program gives children a haven
Borders

By FRAN BLINEBURY
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

It is a nightmare of a generation.

It is an everyday occurrence in the townships of South Africa. It is the worst kind of horror.

Sewela Ramoleta and her two younger sisters were raped by their father. He infected them with the AIDS virus. He impregnated Sewela. He was killed by the hand of his own son, their brother, who was then taken to prison.

On another gloriously blue afternoon when the NBA traveling party for Basketball Without Borders — Africa took time away from the jump shots and slam dunks, the show performed on a dirt floor at Ithuteng Trust was the shadow and the light.

The play was a re-creation. The tears were real. On the face of the 16-year-old who was re-telling her tale. Running down the cheeks of the 7-foot millionaire athletes who had come from America for an education and got it like a shank of hot steel in the gut.

"The man who was supposed to be my father was actually my abuser," Sewela said softly into the microphone. "My mother and I could not bear the pain of raising my father's child. So abortion became my only choice. I cried so many tears when I saw the blood that I spilled and thought of what it represented.

"The person who was supposed to be protecting me, guiding me, showing me the way was instead showing me the worst part of life."

Which is when she met Mama Jackey.

Jackey Maarohanye was born in Johannesburg and abandoned by her mother, left in the street. Now she is a willful woman with bright features, a husband and five children.

She worked in the South African prison system until 1990 when she convinced then-President Nelson Mandela to allow her to establish the Ithuteng (pronounced ID-u-tongue) Trust, a center to provide "at-risk youth" with life skills and education.

Soweto, on the southwest fringes of JoBurg, as it's called, is familiar to the world as a symbol of the violence and outrage of the apartheid days. No less a killing field today, the township literally holds millions, most of whom live in tiny shanties or crammed within the brick walls of four-room government housing.

The children of these streets are not just "at risk," but virtually condemned to an existence that can hardly be imagined. Which is why Ithuteng is so much more than a school or a home. It is a haven.

"The day I met Mama Jackey, the smile returned to my face," Sewela said. "To walk into these doors, I knew that I could be safe."

A cold reality
Virtually all of the nearly 2,500 students enrolled at Ithuteng have been abused, most sexually. A large majority of them are HIV-positive.

Before entering Ithuteng, the children spend a night locked in a real prison, to give them a shock treatment of what a wasted life can produce. They are taken to hospitals to visit with rape victims and gunshot victims and patients with AIDS. They toil in rehab centers and do the lowest forms of work. They are taken to orphanages to see up close the effects of sexual promiscuity.

They are being scared and told to take responsibility for themselves, then finally brought into the system, where the teaching and counseling is done by peers.

Ithuteng means "self-teaching"in the Sotho language.

"I want them to know that it is OK to feel the pain of neglect, of being unloved," Mama Jackey said. "But I also want them to know that they can pick themselves up out of this situation.

"At the end of the month, when most people are counting the numbers of their money to pay their bills, to buy things, I'm counting the number of girls like Sewela that we've saved, the number of kids we've taken in with HIV or AIDS."

It is the only school — public or private — among the hundreds in the Johannesburg area that had 100 percent of its students pass South Africa's stringent end-of-year exams.

Yet ironically, the participants in this NBA outreach program wound up being touched. Not only by Sewela's story but by the sheer joy and enthusiasm of everyone who took part in a celebration of traditional and modern African song and dance.

"I don't think I have any emotions left inside me to come out," said Rockets scout Brent Johnson, wiping at the corners of his eyes. "I feel like I've played two or three basketball games. I'm spent."

Houston native and Spurs assistant coach Lance Blanks took a deep breath.

"I'd say that a large percentage of my learning curve — what I thought I knew about the world — just went way up," he said.

Those kinds of reactions prompt the newest member of the Rockets, Dikembe Mutombo, a native of Congo, to spend so much of his off-court time working to get his NBA peers to recognize the troubles that face the people of Africa.

The NBA players on the trip included Ruben Boumtje Boumtje of Senegal and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Samuel Dalembert of Haiti and the Philadelphia 76ers, DeSagana Diop of Senegal and the Cavaliers, as well as Americans Zach Randolph of the Portland Trail Blazers, Shawn Bradley of the Dallas Mavericks and Malik Rose of the San Antonio Spurs.

Mutombo lending big hand
But it is Mutombo who is out front leading the fight. After his visit to Ithuteng a year ago, he donated $100,000 to build a dormitory on the campus, and a few days ago it was brightly painted and opened after the children planted rose bushes in the front yard, sang songs and dressed up Mutombo and his huge athlete friends in the traditional garb of Zulu warriors.

"As an African, I have had a chance to be rewarded in two different worlds, a chance to be somebody on two continents," Mutombo said. "Three-fourths of the AIDS deaths in the world have been in Africa. There are 30 million infected worldwide right now with AIDS and 20 million of those are in Africa.

"The mortality rate in Africa is only 42 years. By the year 2015, it is expected that 50 percent of the African population will be infected with AIDS before age 25. I want so much to find a way to save this continent."

Mama Jackey is doing it in her way with the help of the NBA and the NBA Players Association. The Ithuteng Trust was in danger of closing in 1999. That's when Mama Jackey's oldest daughter, who was working in New York, approached league officials. A relationship was established, nurtured and now flourishes.

The NBA built a learning center, supplied 15,000 books for a library and bought computers. As a result of the NBA's partnership, Ithuteng has finally attracted the attention of the U.S. Embassy, and more funds are coming for a television room and supplies.

"I wake up every day, and I cry," Mutombo said. "Because Africa is dying."

Sewela Ramoleta smiles.

"My life is better," she said.

A little girl's story.

Of shadow and light.