When interviewed, Mrs Thandiwe Bhuka speaks in tones reminiscent of a Devil Wears Prada-type corporate executive – all class and well-rounded vowels. Then she takes to the stage before an audience of boisterous schoolgirls and out comes the tongue in cheek and the moves – oh those moves – an unusual hybrid of the hip-thrusting kwasa kwasa and the good ol’ fashioned waltz.
As the project manager of Second Chances, this captivating and flagrant personality invariably comes with the territory. You can’t exactly sell yourself as an NPO committed to “empower women and children…that are healed (mentally and emotionally) through upliftment from traumas brought about by abuse” when you take yourself too seriously. When you’re all uptight, bland and out of step with your mostly youthful target audience.
Long before the official founding of Second Chances, Bhuka was a footsoilder activist with a bone to grind against the nationwide scourge of gender-based violence (GBV). A survivor of GBV herself, one particularly gruesome incident that unnerved her was the senseless rape of an 8-year old girl around 2018 by her reckoning. That crime gratuitously brought the point home for her.
“When that incident happened,” she says, “everybody was crying for justice, that justice must be served on those who did this to the child. But my thinking immediately went to the child herself. What would happen to her in terms of her emotions? The guy (offender) would go to jail but the damage done to that child can never be undone.”
Thenceforth she would exert all her energies towards establishing Second Chances which “focuses on the victims, their mental wellness…helping them deal with the trauma of what they’ve gone through.”
In its conception in 2019, it was little more than a roundtable support group. But with gradual funding, Bhuka was able to rope in two social workers, fieldworkers, a finance intern and some administration personnel. Nowadays they offer free counseling, are proactive in that they don’t wait for victims to come to them instead they go around schools preaching the gospel of child abuse prevention, psychosocial intervention, mediating with offenders and victims to bring about some form of reconciliation amongst an array of other services.
So amicable have their relations, in particular with the school community been, that today (17 September) they decided to invite mostly girl-children from four different schools to a small after-school soiree.
The hired DJ amped behind the decks, his song selection of popular hits reverberating through the town hall and the children noticeably itching to let loose – it was clearly about to go down! Though it was mission impossible to judge who had the best moves on the day, we’ll put our head on the chopping block and say they were all pretty awesome. Otherwise why else could the audience’s cheering be heard as far as two blocks down the ever-bustling Church Street?
But the clincher for everybody was just about to come. Recognising the material difficulties often faced by learners and that often result in high drop-out levels, the NPO had some new school uniforms to hand out to those in dire need of them. The young smiles widened even further when 120 dignity bags consisting of cosmetics and sanitary towels were dished out to all in sundry.
Some keynote figures had availed themselves on the day. These included, inter alia, Mr Zukisani George from Sisterhood Heroines, ANCYL Regional Chairperson Andile Pololo, Government Communications and Information Services Thenjiwe Konono and Social Crime Coordinator Mrs Nomathamsanqa Nkabi.
Sadly this event comes in the wake of the murder of Bokgabo Poo, the 4-year old girl whose horrid death has sent shockwaves throughout the country. What such a sweet-looking young girl could’ve done to deserve such an ugly end when she still had the rest of her life ahead of her is something that continues to rankle anybody who still holds dear to the idea of a fair and just society. Chances of her next of kin ever reading this are probably non-existent, still, from the most sincere depths of our hearts here at eParkeni we extend our heartfelt condolences. Second Chances lives up to its name, but for little Bokgabo there is no such redemption to her tragedy. For what it’s worth, this one’s in her memory. ❤️
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