BACKGROUND

Led by Kate Wells and housed in the Department of Graphic Design at the Durban Institute of Technology in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the Siyazama Project  was initially funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and administered by the British Council, Durban, South Africa. Expert rural craftswomen from the Valley of a Thousand Hills, Inanda Valley, Msinga region, and Ndwedwe informal settlements, undergraduate and postgraduate design students, health workers, doctors, traditional healers, People Living with HIV/AIDS, medical anthropologists, performers, musicians and marketing outlets work together on a multiplicity of levels in addressing AIDS awareness whilst engendering a ‘breaking of the silence’ and ‘straight talk’ approach. The Siyazama Project seeks to promote the role of design to affirm indigenous knowledge and skills as a means to disseminate vital information about HIV/AIDS amongst, and by, the most marginalised and vulnerable of people in South Africa – rural women.

Rural women hold a contradictory role in modern Zulu society. While they are primarily sole breadwinners in their rural homes, and have earned a degree of role-model status through their expert craft-making abilities and are thus regarded as opinion-makers in their communities, they are simultaneously highly susceptible to HIV infection through their biological make-up, gender imbalances, gender dynamics, illiteracy and cultural taboos. For the majority of these craftswomen, participation in the Siyazama Project workshops has provided them with their first opportunity to hear of AIDS and its complexities other than via gossip and rumour. And even when they are thus informed, socio-economic barriers, a lack of formal schooling and cultural taboos related to the discussion of sexual matters can render them silent and disempowered, unless they can find an alternative and permissible mode of expression.

Kate Wells completed her MA Design qualification through Middlesex University in London in 2000 and is currently registered for a PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Recent information on the project:
In 2002 and 2003 the Siyazama Project experienced two of the most energetic and active years to date, and extends its very grateful thanks to the Ackerman Foundation for the funding received which has made much of this activity possible.  This funding has provided the project with the opportunity to reach further heights in broadening its advocacy and marketing attributes both nationally and internationally. It has also, importantly, allowed the project to extend its primary aim which is to economically empower and transfer life-saving knowledge on HIV/AIDS and all of its complexities to the expert rural craftswomen - the primary beneficiaries of the Siyazama Project and its methodologies. Further funding received from the British Council and the National Research Foundation (NRF), as well as the DIT research fund has built the project into one of national and international significance.

Since 1998 the rural craftswomen in the Siyazama Project have dealt with, and have been exposed to a broad range of information concerning HIV/AIDS and in brief have covered the following areas: awareness, prevention, dealing with the myths, nutrition, caring for the sick, remembering the dead, medical magic practices, dealing with the growing AIDS orphan problem (we have a growing international AIDS orphan project in which the intention is to place a small beaded AIDS orphan doll on every computer in the world and so far we are achieving a great deal of success!) and we completed a series of First Aid for AIDS workshops in October/November 2002 which focused on the appropriate management of opportunistic diseases that manifest in the HIV positive patient. In 2003 the project focused on the scheduling of anti-retroviral therapies.

To date it is not an overstatement to note that local, national and international orders and requests for the beaded cloth dolls and tableaus are increasing immensely. In November 2002 the Siyazama Business Unit was formed and this is run independently of the main research and design project.

Design Innovation Workshops began in earnest in the middle of June 2002 with the Project not only gearing up to be exhibited, on invitation, at the WSSD World Summit on Sustainable Development in JHB but also to undertake numerous smaller projects involving under-graduate design students of the DIT Design School.  The workshops primarily involved the launching and subsidizing of the new AIDS Orphan project (at the request of the rural craftswomen who are increasingly having to look after and feed more young orphaned children in their villages and communities), creative workshops involving presentation, packaging, corporate innovation development and building onto the current Siyazama Project collection for advocacy reasons.

The Siyazama Project Collection, consisting of over 280 items of beaded cloth dolls, tableaus, beaded jewellery and telephone wire imbenge’s returned from London in April 2003 following a very successful two and a half month exhibition at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA) at Middlesex University. This undertaking was funded entirely by the British Council. Both Kate Wells – leader of the project - and Prof. Ian Sutherland – HOD Graphic Design - presented papers during this time at the university seminar on Design and Health. Accompanying them were Mthandeni Zama, lecturer in Graphic Design at the DIT and Bonangani Ximba, rural participant in the Siyazama Project, who in turn was able to report first-hand on her experiences whilst in London back to her rural craft community in KwaZulu-Natal.  The exhibition was published in the London Time-Out magazine, the Independent on Sunday as well as an illustrated article in the most recent Lancet Medical Journal.

Following on from this international exposure, the UK’s National AIDS Trust under their AWARE Campaign, ‘adopted’ the Siyazama Project for 2003 and ran in the Dublin Marathon in Ireland as a fund raiser for the project.

In August 2003 the Michigan State University Museum worked together with the craftswomen in the Siyazama Project to produce a very beautiful collection of beaded fully documented crafts which are intended, not only for the MSU Museum, but also for the Smithsonian Museum – both of which we were very proud to be part of. This activity was funded by the Michigan State University.

The Department of Jewelry Design under the leadership of Chris De Beer joined in these workshops and this collaboration proved very worthwhile. The advocacy surrounding these schedules of workshops will help to uncover and dispel many of the reservations surrounding the anti-retroviral treatments, in preparation for the long awaited roll-out programmes.

Kate was appointed external examiner at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, East Africa, in the Art and Design programmes in 2001 and joined colleagues there in August 2002 and 2003. Her National Research Foundation (NRF) funded research into appropriate design for sustainable development took her into rural Uganda to visit rural craftswomen and to view the design and health predicaments that affect them. Following on from the last visit to various HIV/AIDS clinics in rural Uganda she returned to South Africa with the firm vision to set up a Centre for Rural Craftswomen in Durban which caters purely for their health and creative needs. This has now become the future vision for the Siyazama Project and it the wish of all the women in the project that this is accomplished.

It is clear that the women are now fully engaged with the idea and knowledge of HIV/AIDS – this was proven at a recent Indigenous Knowledge Seminar run by Prof. Joan Conolly in which the rural women spoke of how they dispense information on sexual education to their families, peers and neighbours. The pressing issue is to keep them this way and to continually improve on their access to life-saving knowledge, whilst ensuring that their crafts find a place in the market so as to maximize their efforts to improve their economic status.

The Siyazama Project focuses directly at making sure that the craftswomen and their families make it through the AIDS pandemic unscathed.