From 3 November tot 3 December each year, South Africans celebrate National Disability Rights Awareness month, and across the world, 3 December is celebrated as International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Sadly, one can ask the question why people need special "awareness" months like these to highlight the struggles people with disabilities face daily.
This year's theme in South Africa is: Empowering persons with disabilities through resourceful, sustainable and safe environments. "Whenever there is a need to create 'awareness', one should ask oneself the question: Why are we not aware of this issue? Why should we need to be reminded about it?" says Ms Sandy James of the IsAbility Sports Club in Louis Trichardt. She goes on to explain. "A disability is often regarded as something that happens to someone else. And very often in our communities, people who live with any form of disability are 'hidden away' - or that may be our perception. In many instances, the latter could be true, but there is a very real, practical reason why we do not see people with disabilities moving freely in the public space. That reason is the fact that we have very few disability-friendly or wheelchair-accessible public facilities," says James.
Regarding her statement, James urges residents to ask themselves a simple question. "If we consider our own local town Louis Trichardt and surrounding rural villages, how many accessible public facilities have you come across? How many organisations that serve the public have accessible toilets and bathrooms?" James asks.
James says that a disability is often an impairment that one is born with, but even more often it comes as a result of an accident or unforeseen illness. This may happen at any time during one's life - to anyone. "Until one has lived alongside someone with a disability, one can be blissfully unaware of the challenges faced. What a physically able person regards as perfectly normal is not so easy for someone with a physical challenge. For example, a parent attending his or her child's sports event at school, or a child facing the sentence of being relegated to a 'special school' because there are no accessible facilities at mainstream schools, or even a mere shopping excursion to a mall. Any of these occasions would create huge challenges for someone in a wheelchair," James says.
One of the aspects of the local IsAbility Sports Club's vision and mission is to create awareness of opportunities for people with disabilities and develop those opportunities. "We are enormously grateful for the amazing support our projects receive from our local community and wish to use this opportunity to thank all our volunteers, sponsors and members for their valued involvement and contributions. We are also indebted to some of our local schools, namely Emmanuel Christian School, Louis Trichardt High School and Louis Trichardt Primary School, for always being willing to make their facilities available to us for events and functions," says James.
According to James, these schools are always willing to allow them to use their equipment and they go out of their way to make sure that they are assisted in every way possible. "To the principals, staff and governing bodies of these schools, a big THANK YOU! When we organise an event for a group of people with disabilities, where there are sometimes more than 20 who are in wheelchairs, ablution facilities are always a big issue. Here, again, we are indebted to Talisman and Laurie Bannatyne, who always goes out of his way to see that we are assisted with mobile toilets that are wheelchair accessible. These toilets have to be transported from Polokwane for each event," James says.
Regarding her last remark, James feels that this brings her to a practical way that the community in Louis Trichardt could make a difference to people living with disabilities - and it would impact the whole community. "If we can raise funds within our local community towards constructing suitable wheelchair-accessible toilets at some of our local schools, that would be the beginning of our own community's embracing the needs of the physically vulnerable. This 'Make our local public facilities an accessible and safe environment for people with disabilities project' is on the verge of being launched. Please watch this space for more information on how you, as a concerned and aware member of our community, can become involved!" James said.
On a positive note, Mr Theo Muller, Louis Trichardt High School's principal, has already pledged support to the initiative, saying that if the funds could be raised, they would gladly house these ablution facilities. As an aside, what is also important to remember is that these ablution facilities do not need to be built from scratch. They can also be made accessible by making alterations to current buildings, such as expanding walls, changing the handles of doors and taps, making ramps, etc.
This coming Saturday 12 November, the IsAbility Sports Club will be hosting their senior champs and provincial trials at Louis Trichardt High School's grounds. "We are so excited, because our senior component has increased from five in 2019 to 63 athletes this coming Saturday - from across Limpopo. These are just seniors, as the juniors have already had their trials in Tzaneen. We are also having our annual general meeting (AGM) after the event and would like to invite anyone who is interested in becoming involved or just seeing what is possible for a person with a disability, to come along. At our AGM, we always give feedback on the progress of our various projects too," said James. The AGM is from 13:00 to 14:00, while the athletes will be participating from 08:00 until 12:30.