Gran Power!

Cwengi’s support group helps to ease the burden of women who find themselves raising their grandchildren.

- Khatija Nxedlana

SHE’S at an age when no one would blame her if she were to sit in the sun all day, sipping tea and knitting jerseys for her grandchildren.

After all, she has a long and successful career as a nurse behind her, so she deserves to enjoy a peaceful retirement, right?

Well, yes – but slowing down isn’t part of Cwengekile Myeni’s vocabulary.

The 74-year-old grandmother of five is not only filling her twilight years with meaning and activity, she’s motivating others to do the same – and changing their lives in the process.

Cwengi, as she’s affectionately known, is the founder of the Gogo Support Group, an programme that provides support to grandparents who’ve been handed the huge task of raising their grandchildren, usually with little or no income.

Many of these grandmothers have become the sole guardians of their grandkids after the death of their children, often as a result of HIV/Aids.

After raising their own families, the grannies have to start all over again. And they often feel at a loss about how to cope.

Enter Cwengi and her support group, which she started just more than 10 years ago under the banner of the Hillcrest Aids Centre Trust (HACT).

The project isn’t about handouts, she tells us, but about equipping grannies to be the best versions of themselves, no matter how old they are.

“When I started the gogo project, people would ask, ‘So what are you giving us?’ I wanted to change that,” she says. “I wanted people to do things for themselves.

“Some women feel there’s nothing they can do because of their age. But I tell them, ‘Well, I’m here. I’m still working; I’m still moving around.’ They need to see someone else who can do it to see there’s still a lot they can do.”