Nokwanele Mbewu

Nokwanele Mbewu was born in Cala, South Africa. She manages the Mentor Mother Programme at the Philani Maternal Child Health and Nutrition Trust in Khayelitsha township in Cape Town, South Africa. The Philani Clinic provides holistic health and nutrition support to women and families in townships; its Mentor Mother Programme has been extended to South Africa’s Eastern Cape, as well as to Swaziland and Ethiopia.

Nokwanele Mbewu was interviewed about her life, career and hope for the future for 200 WOMEN, a book and exhibition project founded on the principle of gender equality comprising original interviews and accompanying photographic portraits. This landmark project is the realisation of an epic global journey to find two hundred women with diverse backgrounds, and to ask them what really matters to them.

Q. What really matters to you?
My job and my children are who I am – I have two beautiful daughters, and their futures are so important. The care of women and children matters, it hurts me when I think about lost children and children without opportunities. When I go on home visits, I always look into the eyes of each child I visit. In those eyes something is written: it says, ‘I have potential.’ That potential needs to be fostered. So, fostering children’s potential if and where I can matters to me.

Q. What brings you happiness?
What also makes me happy is seeing children getting better. When I first started with the Mentor Mother Programme, I met three girls on a home visit. They were living in a shack that didn’t have proper walls – the walls were made of plastic. Every night, this guy was coming over, opening the home and taking a child to rape. I thought about those beautiful girls every night until they were removed by a social worker and taken somewhere that I knew they would be safe. It makes me happy to see positive change; I see so much misery in this job, but when I see things change for the better I feel such joy. The women I work with have such capacity for strength, and watching them realise that makes me so, so happy.

Q. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Knowing that there are so many people in need of help, but seeing those with the ability to help them ignore the moral obligation to do so.

Q. What would you change if you could?
We have 140 mentor mothers. Together they have a caseload of about five thousand families a year – so you can see how much vulnerability there is. We’re doing what little we can, but there is just so much need. So, that’s what I would change if I could – I would make sure that anyone in need received help.
Q. Which single word do you most identify with?
Care.