WE SPOKE TO TWO OF THE WOMEN EMBRACE DIGNITY HAS HELPED.

‘I recall growing up as a happy-go-lucky kid in Woodstock,’ says Grizelda Grootboom. She lived in an old house in the Cape Town suburb with her grandparents and father until 1988, when she was eight years old. ‘In the space of a year I lost my grandfather and my grandmother, then we were forced out of our home by the Apartheid government.’ With nowhere to go, she and her father lived on the streets. ‘He would leave me at shelters for weeks at a time, but the last time he just never came back.’ Grizelda heard that the mother who had abandoned her as a baby was living in Khayelitsha with her new family. ‘I think I got on the train