While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Special Assignment or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.

 

 

 

ON THE HIGHWAY

 

FENLEY: Truckers are particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. They often spend weeks and months away from their wives or partners with loneliness a constant companion. This week we look at the steps taken by the trucking industry to help protect its members from HIV infection. And we bring you an update on our farm laboures story.

 

UPS: VOICER - Today Richard Lekgele is at home. It’s a rare occasion for his family. Richard is a truck driver and Instructor and spends most of his time on the road.

 

UPS: - MARTHA LEKGELE; RICHARDS’S WIFE - We see him once a week. He comes either Fridays or Saturday and leave on Sunday.

 

UPS: - NTHABISENG LEKGELE; DAUGHTER - I wish my father could get another job.

 

UPS: - KARABO LEKGELE; DAUGHTER - I wish my daddy could be here on Saturdays and Sundays with his family.

 

UPS: - VOICER - These kids grew up like this and Martha got married knowing Richard would be away most of the time.  They can only dream of a normal family life.

 

UPS: - MARTHA LEKGELE RICHARDS’S WIFE - The kids ask me why leaves us. Other fathers and sleep at home, why not dad? I tell them it is work, he has to.

 

PRE- TITLE: ON THE HIGHWAYS

 

UPS: VOICER - Richard Lekgele has been driving trucks for the last twenty years. He and a workmate are getting ready to drive from Johannesburg to Durban on South Africa’s busiest highway the N3.

 

UPS: RICHARD LEKGELE; TRUCK DRIVER - I remember the time when I was fourteen years old where I was in a farm, in Memel where I use to visit my grandmother there was a big Ford truck. I said one day I would drive these big trucks

 

UPS: VOICER - It’s at least a ten hour drive with thirty four tons of cargo on this twenty six wheeler. He has done it more times than he cares to remember. Twenty years is long time in the trucking Industry. Trucks and their technology have changed dramatically. So too have the industry’s challenges.  AIDS for one has become a major threat. Mobile groups like truckers and seasonal workers - are particularly vulnerable to HIV as they spend long periods of time away from home. The freight Industry employs about seventy five thousand people, thirty five thousand of whom are long distance drivers. More than a third off them are estimated to be HIV positive.

 

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES  - If I had to go back ten years ago I will tell you that if you went to any transporter the gate you will have the pull of drivers that were waiting to be employed you do not get that any more.

 

UPS: VOICER - It’s already dusk when Richard and his mate have finally loaded their trucks and can set off for Durban. Richards makes at least four of these trips a week. If he’s lucky he’ll spend one night at home. About seven years ago, HIV/AIDS started making itself felt in the truckers Union.  Members demanded action and the union put pressure on employers to do something. They all realized that the future looked bleak...

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – Our members more especially the shop steward have realized that most of the long distance truck drivers it seems like their life is becoming shorter and shorter.

 

UPS: - LOUIS HOLLANDER; TRUCKING AGAINST AIDS - We realized that we were mo immobile industry and the spreading of HIV-AIDS amongst not only our drivers but also the women are at risk on the roads this is going to be a problem in the long run.

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – At some point lawyers were saying they cannot be blamed for the  disease that they did not commit

 

UPS: - LOUIS HOLLANDER; TRUCKING AGAINST AIDS - For employees and employers they didn’t really know what was this all about

 

UPS: - VOICER - So the Industry and the Union decided to take the fight to the roads - with initial support from government. They established Clinics or wellness centers along major routes to look after the mainstay of the Industry, the drivers.

 

UPS: RICHARD LEKGELE; TRUCK DRIVER - Some people we advise to visit the clinic when sick. When I started on the roads it was 1987, there were no clinics we had to travel to town to get the doctor. At times in town there is no space to park the truck now these days it is better.

 

 

UPS: VOICER - This is Paul Matthew. He heads up Ikaheng HR Services the organization tasked with treating, educating and caring for truck drivers on their journeys across the country. Ikaheng with the backing of the Unions and freight Industry employers has established ten wellness centers on major national roads across the country. There are three on the N3 alone. A mobile van covers roads without wellness centres.

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES  - there is an average of south bound fifteen hundred vehicles a day north bound fifteen hundred a day so get an average of three thousand vehicles on the N3. The main aim was to reduce the spread of STI and if we were concentrating on the drivers not the looking after sex workers we won’t balance the scale. And therefore we got involved commercial sex workers to take part in the project.

 

UPS: VOICER - Poverty has pushed many women to the truck routes. Any attempts to tackle the HIV/AIDS scourge on the highways and among truckers cannot ignore them.

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES - The N3 was the first   on the pilot project where we actually trained the whole lot of educators, commercial sex workers so they would carry the message across the drivers.

 

 UPS: - THEMBA MTHOMBENI; PROJECT ASSISTANT – We must never blame these girls and say what they are doing is wrong. At the end of the day the girl is putting food on the table and again he is paying school fees for his or her kids other are supporting their mothers from this money.

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES - We currently on the road freight industry probably have a prevalence rate of about thirty percent which is half of our industry. We are losing many drivers per annum through various courses the major on being HIV- AIDS.

 

UPS: VOICER - Richard has hours to go behind the wheel. He won’t reach Durban tonight and will have to sleep at one of the truck stops on the way. It’s during these times of intense loneliness that   caregivers at wellness centers get busy. 

 

UPS: - VOICER - Richard has hours to go behind the wheel. He won’t reach Durban tonight and will have to sleep at one of the truck stops on the way

 It’s during these times of intense loneliness that   caregivers at wellness centers get busy. 

 

UPS: RICHARD LEKGELE; TRUCK DRIVER - It is a lonely job. But these days we have radio’s you can play your cassette CD listen to the music.

 

AD BREAK 1

 

UPS: - VOICER - This is Harrismith, one of the busiest of the truck stops. This is where truckers come to have a meal, to connect with friends and to the world outside their machines. It’s also where they come if they need to consult at a wellness centre.

 

UPS: RICHARD LEKGELE; TRUCK DRIVER - They advice you they tell you to be aware that if you are going to do this there is AIDS. When you get in the clinics there is a gin that shows that the people who are sick how they look like. If you get a chance you ask them what happened here and they will explain to you.

 

UPS: - THEMBA MTHOMBENI; PROJECT ASSISTANT – They will come park their trucks here and go buy some food others what they will do is go buy some beer most of them are stressed they need something to cool them down. Go to the taverns come later and take these girls to the trucks.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Many other sectors of our economy have not yet tackled HIV head-on like this some for fear of the costs involved. These centres are not fancy, but they do the work effectively.

 

UPS: - ELISA SIMELANE; WELLNESS CENTER NURSE - Monday, Tuesdays, Wednesday and Thursday it is busy here. Friday you will find out it is not so busy here because the truck drivers are going home. It is so busy especially during the night between ten o’clock, eleven and twelve o’clock.

 

UPS: - VOICER - It is that time of the night that truck drivers leave the road for one of the truck stops

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES  - The truckers are definitely vulnerable due to the fact it is the night of the business the drivers are away from home for longer period of time up to a month

 

UPS: - LOUIS HOLLANDER; TRUCKING AGAINST AIDS - they do not have the sort of social life that the normal employee will have because most of the weekend they are working all depends on the work load so  what they are doing they socialize on the road.

 

UPS: - VOICER - The irony is that these wellness centres would not attract as many drivers as they do- without the taverns and these women.

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – the wage alone itself cannot  feed the family of three or four members for that to really supplement that wage they make sure that they push to work overtimes. Others are even pushed to work through the load system or the kilometer system which makes a driver not being able to be with the family.

 

UPS: RICHARD LEKGELE; TRUCK DRIVER - when they are young they grow up realisizing that the kids asking question Baba why always you are not at home and Sibusiso father is always here. He goes to work in the morning and he is coming back. There is a number of questions they want me to answer I keep on as they are growing up that children look whatever is here in this house it is because  of me as I am going out. I am going to fetch money for you.

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – If you spent weeks and months on the road nature sometimes obviously call and you respond to that.

 

UPS: - THEMBA MTHOMBENI; PROJECT ASSISTANT – If a driver is driving here to Cape Town he is alone nobody to talk just on the way that is why most of them when they are arrive at the truck stops they will need these ladies to distress them out because they are stressed maybe there is a problem at home he cannot go because he is driving to deliver something.

 

UPS: - LOUIS HOLLANDER; TRUCKING AGAINST AIDS - The industry is under threat because of HIV-Aids and the reason for that is the threat is because  of …. labour that is drivers

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES - the prevalence rate is definitely in your real core of drivers the real working drivers where it is very high. We are going to land up with the rather big gap. We are going to have new guys coming in the industry and you are going to have very old guys but the real working side is the problem.

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – it is a threat in to our economy. It does not actually affect only the union members but obviously it takes away the skill that the actually industry have invested.

 

UPS: - LOUIS HOLLANDER; TRUCKING AGAINST AIDS - in the olden days you had drivers standing at the gate you can go and pick and choose they are no more there. They are no more at the gate standing waiting for work.

 

UPS: - VOICER – Fifty four thousand truckers and sex workers have visited these centers.

 

UPS: - NURSE - you find out five patients maybe two are positive maybe three are negative.

 

UPS: - SBONELO ZACA; AIDS COUNSELLOR - one positive or two positive per week. Especially young one thirty five downwards.

 

UPS: - THEMBA MTHOMBENI; PROJECT ASSISTANT – On Wednesday because the nurse came late. They supply us with the …there were about ten people who came the nurses realized that there were eight people with STI

 

UPS: - VOICER - For many of these men, life is tough. They sacrifice time with their family to earn a living. In the process they expose themselves to loneliness and become soft targets for the marauding virus. So far so good for Richard but not for the man who was driving this truck. A mistake or fatigue can result in millions of rands being lost in an instant.

 

UPS: RICHARD LEKGELE; TRUCK DRIVER - I wanted to speak to my wife to hear what how she is coping at home right now. I want to speak to your mother. You are busy eating aren’t you? How are you?  I am fine. I’m on my way to Durban. Are you missing me?

 

UPS: - VOICER - It’s almost ten hours later. Richards journey to Durban is about to end. The city is waking up, awaiting all the goods these trucks bring with them. Most of South Africa’s freight is moved by road rather than by rail. AIDS has the potential to affect every aspect of life here. In spite of the difficulties of a mobile workforce, the freight Industry has met the challenge head on and has made some progress.

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES - What is happening is that we are having new drivers coming in the industry which are the younger generation who are already HIV Positive. So it is a problem if you do not take care of individual he probably has life span of about fifteen years.

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – Every week a driver you get reports that driver so and so has passed away when you ask questions he was sick very sick and so forth and so forth. Then you conclude in your mind that if he was sick how long and what kind of sickness was that. You find those kind of HIV related thing like TB and other things becomes an issue.

 

UPS: - LOUIS HOLLANDER; TRUCKING AGAINST AIDS - We faced on the long run on the industry is obviously we sit with a large absenteeism you sit with a lot of hour of pension fund provident funds at this stage is no more pension provident funds. It’s becoming an insurance type of scheme because of the high death toll of life insurances premiums getting so big that there is hardly any money going into the pension provident itself.

 

UPS: - PAUL MATHEWS; CEO IKAHENG HR SERVICES  - Now the industry is staring to have a look at ARV’s treatment for employers within the industry as the project team we put our heads together and realised that we now need to prolong life.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Many feel that the Department of Transport has not played its part. They   initially contributed R50 000 to Trucking against AIDS. But that’s where it ended. Government’s inertia on HIV/AIDS has led to ongoing clashes between government, the unions and some NGOs. Thousands of truck driver’s criss-cross the highways and byways of the country and the continent carrying goods that keep our economy going. The unions are growing increasingly worried that not enough is being done

 

UPS: - ABNER RAMAKGOLO; SECTOR CO-ORDINATOR, SATAWU – I have a serious problem with the way government they approached this matter because people are dying they are not waiting for messiah to come down and say this is a real HIV-AIDS. I mean we have seen people dying you cannot actually go for scientific test to find whether Aids kills or not. Today the transport sector HIV- AIDS is no more it is dead. We thought that we actually formed bigger fights to the scourge.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Truckers have the potential to spread the virus far and wide… and to carry it back home to waiting wives and girlfriends. The establishment of these centers and the campaign against AIDS on the roads by the Industry have come just in time. They may help stem the tide of HIV/ AIDS and so prevent the collapse of the industry… something that would undoubtedly be catastrophic for the entire country.

 

 

AD BREAK 2

 

 UPDATE

 

UPS: - VOICER - Recently Special Assignment visited the wealthy wine lands of Franchhoek concealed in the shadow of the valley are farm laboures whose living and working conditions are disgrace to the progressive democracy. We did not provide only the portion on poverty we also paid tribute to farm workers and NGO’s who have helped transform the farms in the valley and we acknowledge the commitment of several wine estate to genuine work empowerment. Since the programme we have learned that the winds of transformation are gusting to one of the farms we investigated owned by Reverend Johan van Rensburg La Provence now seemed intend on becoming a model of farm worker empowerment. With the assistance of labour consultant Wilfred Moses a worker thrust has been established and unacceptable housing, wages and working conditions are now being addressed.

 

UPS: - WILFRED MOSES; LABOUR CONSULTANT – The owner will allocate piece of land to the trust and the workers will be the sole beneficiaries. The employers in that sense have ownership and they can transfer that ownership to the widow or widower or either to the next of kin

 

UPS: - VOIVER - The workers have elected their own representatives to voice grievances and secure their future

 

UPS: - MARGARET ALLIES; WORKER TRUST REP - Since I’ve been on the farm nothing has happened to alleviate the plight of the farm workers. I used to go to meetings and visit the municipality to invite them to witness first hand what was happening on La Provence.

 

UPS: - JAN JOOSTE; WORKER TRUST REP - We would like to see some change happening in terms of housing as well as the introduction of electricity and water to the homesteads.

 

UPS: - ERIC BAARTMAN; WORKER TRUST REP- I am the eldest worker on the farm and  I am extremely happy and thankful that people have sent to the farm to implement and drive change on the farm.

 

UPS: - VOICER - But he winds  f change are not blowing only to La Provence once described as the model apartheid town Franchhoek is now in the process of transforming itself into a model of community co-operation this is to the ground break initiative called the Franschhoek empowerment  initiative. And this initiative is committed to providing free homes to the poor resolving the apartheid era land claims and creating employment opportunities for the previously disadvantaged. Towards this end a model farm is being constructed on unused land located on the slopes of Franchhoek mountains it includes a wine and estate which will be home to residents and co-owned by historically disadvantaged workers. The major component will be empowerment through agricultural and tourism and most importantly those soils will no longer be landless tenants but land owners n their own rights.

 

UPS: - WILLEM STEENKAMP; FRANSCHHOEK EMPOWERMENT DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE - It is aspires to be that place in Franchhoek where the entire community identifies as being theirs. What is does not want to be is some elite exclusive  wall in jail for rich people who sit there in their own separate elite ness. I think that is the big message we want to send out. Yes in South Africa you can dream and dreams can be realized you must take that first step from the long road.

 

UPS: - VOICER - And perhaps the dreams will be realized for the workers in La Provence and other farms who have the courage to speak out regardless of the consequences. When we first visited Linda Davids and her family their future seemed bleaked. But it was a very different Linda Davids we after the programme.

 

UPS: - LINDA DAVIDS – After the programme people said they saw us on TV. And I said that I was glad because everything must come right. And now the people are satisfied and everything is going to come right.