Anel Coetzee, the founder of SAVIC, is a legal advisor and a former attorney. Her journey to finding her niche has been no easy feat and was fraught with tremendous challenges because of the unbending nature of society to reject that which is deemed different. Her story shows us that with the right support, we can all become contributing citizens of the World and that we should never underestimate the power of the slightest gesture of support as it can facilitate and alleviate the struggles of others as they go about their daily lives.

This is  Anel’s story …

I can feel the cool metal of the railing surrounding my balcony, with my fingertips. I can hear the sounds of moving vehicles and people going about their daily lives, eight floors beneath me. It smells like rain, but for the moment, the sun warms my face, and it is a beautiful day. I know what beauty feels like, I know what it sounds like, and I know it is something that can be experienced by all of our senses, but I do not know what it looks like. In fact, I do not know what anything looks like. In my world, there are only shapes and shadows in which days are either blurred or too bright, with many moving objects and no colours. 

In 1992, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa with a condition known as Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS). It is a condition that occurs when the rubella virus, German measles, in the mother affects the developing baby. There are a myriad of complications associated with CRS but in my case, it affected my retinas.  With damaged retinas and no available cure, I have had to navigate the world depending largely on my other senses.  

Growing up, my childhood was, by all accounts, normal. Apart from some minor adjustments like teaching me to use my remaining senses to accomplish certain tasks, my father, a businessman, and my mother, a teacher, ensured that I, just like my sighted siblings, live an active life. I learnt to ride a bicycle, played hide-and-seek with the neighbourhood children, made my own bed (when I was reminded to), and spent my school holidays climbing trees and swimming in my grandparents’ dam.

Since I could not attend mainstream school with my sisters, I was sent to Prinshof School, a school for visually impaired children. While completing my formative education, I met other children with disabilities who became my friends, for life. However, this educational system, where disabled children are isolated from society and their families, would ultimately become one of the greatest challenges later in my life, because it did not prepare me for life outside the carefully designed and adapted world in which I grew up in.

Through Prinshof, I received a good education, learnt braille and participated in other curricular activities such as the school choir and piano lessons. However, the school did not offer a broad spectrum of sporting activities. With this in mind, my parents decided to enrol me in acrobatic gymnastics after my eldest sister introduced me to it.

With my visual impairment and my love for Barbie’s, I first learnt acrobatic gymnastics through a gymnastic doll. The doll became the tool used to show me how to perform various acrobatic tricks, as I would feel where the doll’s arms and legs were positioned, and then copied those movements with my own body. I practiced this for hours on end and to my astonishment, realized that I was really good at it. I loved walking on my hands, doing back walkovers and challenging myself to what I could do. My introduction to acrobatic gymnastics was “love at first pointed toe” to the extent that I started to participate in competitions, outside of school grounds. Through this exposure. I was starting to become aware that the world was not designed for people with disabilities and that it was up to me to advocate for my individual needs since fellow competitors complained that I was given preferential treatment because the judges pitied me.  It was for the first time in my life that I learnt that perception matters and that it often matters far more than reality.

Consequently, my dance teacher would enrol me without disclosing my disability and the ramification of this was that I could not ask for reasonable accommodation. Thus, prior to the competition period, my parents would take me to the location of competitions to teach me the layout of the stage and to show me where the judges and the audience would be seated. Determined to prove my naysayers wrong, I put in a lot of effort and practice. Finally, in 2002, at the age of 10, I won the South African National Acrobatics Championships in my category, where I was one of approximately eighteen participants, but the only dancer with a disability.

In 2010, I matriculated and decided to pursue a career in law. I registered for a LLB degree at the University of the Free State and in January 2011, my mother and grandmother dropped me off at campus, a five-hours’ drive from home. I was super excited about the new adventures that lay ahead and was eager to start my university lectures.

At 18 years of age and having already experienced my fair share of discrimination and bullying, I thought if I left my white cane at home (which Mom later sent to me within my first month of arrival. What was I thinking right?) and pretended to not have a disability, I would have a better chance of blending in with the crowd and making new friends. But alas, 2011 was the year that I realized how dismally my country has failed me by not providing inclusive education. All of a sudden, I went from a classroom of five learners to a lecture hall of 500 students, with no reasonable accommodation.

Campus life was a challenge as both lecturers and fellow students had no idea how to accommodate or behave around a visually impaired person. Neither did I receive the appropriate orientation and mobility training to navigate the campus. There were also many other disabled students and a limited capacity to timeously convert my textbooks into braille. In most cases, I did not receive my books in time for test and exam preparations and had to write from knowledge acquired during lectures. I subsequently failed my first year and  when I started over, in my second year of university, I started to learn how to use a computer and screen reader and switched from braille study materials to electronic study materials (e-books), which were not very popular at that time.

For most of my able-bodied peers, living in residence with me, the prospect of attending university, was exciting, and their biggest concern was coping with an increased course load and not being awoken by the early morning calls of their parents. As a disabled person, I had to contend with a lack of accessible study materials, a lack of awareness, inaccessible lectures and having to learn to cook for myself and doing my own laundry. It was overwhelming, and the volume of work which included study guides, textbooks and case law was more reading than I have ever done but I pushed ahead.

During the period of my studies, I have acquired so much knowledge on legal subject matters  but the most valuable lessons I have learnt were about myself. On countless occasions, I have wandered unknowingly into male lavatories, approached store mannequins for assistance, walked into doors and knocked over spectacles from people’s faces trying to feel for a seat on trains. I am no stranger to embarrassment and the older I get, the less these incidents hurt my pride. Although I did not blend in and still experienced bullying and ignorance, I chose to not let the actions of others define me. I went on to graduate with an LLB from UFS and completed my articles of clerkship before becoming a practicing attorney.

Securing a job after the completion of my studies was extremely difficult because I was blind and without a driver’s licence. When some of the law firms realized I was visually impaired, I was instantly rejected after initial consideration. Eventually, I was employed by a law firm in Johannesburg and gained valuable experience, but the career path was very taxing as I constantly had to prove myself to clients. Most of my colleagues knew I was capable and competent, and with their guidance and mentorship, I was able to accomplish my tasks, attend meetings and prepare for and appear in court.   However, the unfortunate reality was that most of my working time were spent with strangers and because I am a disabled woman, I was deemed incapable and was treated with condescension.

As an attorney, is it integral to have a good clientele but as a blind attorney, it was difficult to build up a clientele. After five years in practice, and with the firm’s helpful transition from an archival filing system to a paperless system, I reached my personal goals through hard work and consistent effort and was, by society’s standards, successful. Successful, but not happy … I thought that after becoming an attorney, I would finally receive the respect that I have always yearned for as a human being, living with a visual impairment, but despite my accomplishments, that were recognized, I was never fully regarded as an equal. It was a mental health struggle, for me, and time for a change.

In due course, I found work as a legal advisor at a company that tremendously improved the quality of my life, because for the first time, my abilities mattered more than my disability. I am not a visually impaired legal advisor; I am a legal advisor that is competent, capable and hardworking. I am seen as an equal, functioning individual of the greater society. Fortunately for me, this is my current path, but not many disabled individuals can say the same. They continue to walk a path, in society, that praises them when they succeed in a world that is not designed for them yet fails to accommodate them with opportunities to integrate and contribute. Societal barriers are the greatest hurdle for disabled individuals to overcome and through first-hand experience, I can vouch that if disabled individuals are surrounded by people who actively remove these societal barriers, then their disability will not be an issue.

While I enjoy my career and the challenges it presents, my heart will always be with the disabled community. When I am not at work, I spend my time creating awareness, along with my canine companion, on  disabilities but particularly on visual impairments and guide dogs. I share my story in the hopes that it will encourage disabled people to step outside of their comfort zones and reach for their dreams. I also try to destigmatize the myths and misperceptions on disabilities.

For many years, I have felt that the visually impaired community is disconnected and that although we face similar obstacles and challenges, we tend to waste our time and resources by trying to solve our problems, individually. As a result, I started to research practical and accessible ways  that would unite the visual impaired community. 

Earlier this year, in 2022, I launched an online platform, called the South African Visually Impaired Community (SAVIC) on Discord. The purpose of SAVIC is to create a single platform and sense of community where visually impaired  South Africans can find all the resources available to discuss the different career paths chosen, to provide information on employment and bursary opportunities and to share insights on accessible living. SAVIC is a resourceful community, consisting of 41 members, with a lot of expertise. Currently, we host events on topics ranging from access to justice, accessible traveling and new technologies. Going forward, my vision for SAVIC, is that it can be used to identify and rally, as a collective, against instances of discrimination. We are looking to expand our networks and have created a Facebook group that is open to any interested visually impaired person, and their families.

I may be classified as disabled, but I am more than that. I am a sister, a friend, a partner, a professional and an animal lover. My lack of sight does not define me in these roles. My disability moulded me into a resilient and empathetic person, it taught me patience and to find the humour in every situation, but it will never prevent me from living a fulfilling life.

If you are interested in learning more about Anel or would like to get in contact with her, please reach out via her Facebook page, Life after blindness or email her at coetzee.anel@gmail.com. If you are visually impaired and would like to know more about SAVIC, you can join her Facebook Group, SAVI Community.