INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

Lost in Translation
Definitions and Stigmas
“It is rare that one encounters an article or report about the impact of AIDS on
children that does not make reference to current estimates and/or projections of
orphan numbers. This is not a problem in itself – far from it: statistics can be
rhetorically persuasive and important in advocacy work. However, the recurrent
lack of attention to providing clear definitions of the ‘orphans’ thus enumerated
risks questionable conclusions.”
– Mientjes & Giese, 2006
While the variations in living circumstances across South Africa already made
orphanhood a difficult concept around which to develop an adequate terminology, more
challenges arise out of South Africa’s linguistic diversity. As Nelson Mandela’s
administration reconfigured governmental structures to embrace the pluralism of South
Africa’s population, eleven different languages were recognized as official. In the
majority of the languages of African origin, there were no words for “orphan” that did not
posses a strong connotation which altered its utility.
Among South Africa’s indigenous languages, there are four terms which serve as
translations for the English word orphan, each slightly altering its connotation. While the
Xhosa term, inkedama, signifies a child without a parent or caregiver, its linguistic root,
kedama, implies having been abandoned or outcast. (McLaren, 1969) In the Xhosa
29