Page 30 - SCAT Rural Voice II - 35 Stories for 35 Years

Access to Justice
I lived in Lady Frere until what was then referred to as Form Four (Grade 11). During grade 11, I fell pregnant. Despite this hurdle, I completed High school, matriculating in 1985. In 1987 I married a herbalist and moved to Dordrecht.
My life changed in 1989 when I met Rob Watson who was a lawyer from Lawyers for Human Rights. He was visiting Dordrecht and introduced me to the concept of paralegal work. This is when my work at the Dordrecht Advice Office started. I was elected as Treasurer of the Advice Office.
I then joined the Phakomani Awareness Raising Group, a community Based Organisation, funded by Nacosa. As my experience increased, I was appointed as the activator for scAT’s HIV/AIDs Responsive Programme and became the coordinator of the Dordrecht Advice Office.
I wish I could say everything changed since apartheid ended in 1994 and we are all treated with dignity. sadly, the memory of my family’s eviction came back to life one rainy day in 2017, when clients came to the Advice Office with five young children, aged from five to fifteen years old. The parents had travelled on a tractor with their small children to our offices. They had been evicted from their home. I remembered the agony of my family’s eviction and marched off with the clients to the Magistrates court to have the eviction declared unlawful as the proper procedures were not followed. We were successful in our appeal and the clients, with their young children returned to the farm.
Through the generous funding provided by scAT since 1989, our organisation is able to continue assisting vulnerable families like the clients we assisted by appealing their eviction from the farm they were living on. Although I have no law degree, my experiences have shaped in me a sense of justice. I continue to assist, empower and speak for the marginalised in our society. After all, we are all human and entitled to dignity.
aluta! continua!
Dordrecht Advice Office lobbied for solar powered lighting to make the streets safer for women to
28
RuRal Voice ii: 35 stories for 35 years
walk at night.