What are the opening hours?

Monday 08:00 - 17:00 Tuesday 08:00 - 17:00 Wednesday 08:00 - 17:00 Thursday 08:00 - 17:00 Friday 08:00 - 16:00

Be Part Yoluntu Centre, 4 Madikane Street, Paarl (2026)

09/06/2026

Nelson Mandela famously said that sport has the power to change the world.

Sport has the power to “speak to the youth in a language they understand”.

This “language” of sport is spoken fluently at the Mbekweni Community Sport Centre. A centre in Paarl where:
⚽️ The youth of Mbekweni are actively engaged in a variety of sports;
🥅 90 interns are employed annually;
🏉 The aim is to create a space where “everyone has a seat”.

Pictured here is Kwezi Lomso Shumi, first manager of the centre at its opening in 2010, and currently community engagement officer at Be Part.

But sport does far more than just train the physical body. For the youth of Mbekweni, sport provides a safe refuge from the socio-economic challenges they face.
It teaches them valuable life skills. Like leadership, decision-making, self-discipline.

But the most valuable lesson sport teaches, is teamwork.
Teamwork is a skill critical to successfully navigating every key relationship throughout life. Whether it be relationships in the marketplace (college, work), or relationships at home (parents, siblings, partners, children or friends).

The mark of having graduated from youth to adulthood is a journey from dependence to independence. But the most successful and fulfilled adults are those who excel at being inter-dependent.
Ubuntu. Otherwise known as teamwork. Recognising that we need each other.

Compared with a mere collection of individuals, a cohesive team will always deliver the superior product.

At Be Part we are a team of 45 professionals. Working together and proudly embracing our dependence on one another. Including our dependence on our participant community.

02/06/2026

On an early morning in Mbekweni, a curtain of winter mist slowly opens to reveal the majestic Klein Drakenstein mountains. Watching over this beautiful scene is Be Part’s new 732 m2 building: After Hours, Research, Youth.

Over the past 20 years, Be Part Yoluntu Centre is humbled to have played a small part in the life of the people who live nearby. People from Mbekweni, Dalvale and surrounds.

3 of the many services we offer:

1. Our weekly AFTER HOUR CLINIC:
🩺 has treated over 16 000 clients, including 800 who have tested HIV positive;
🩺 is a free efficient service, valued especially by our employed people;
🩺 has earned us the 2009 Mail and Guardian’s “Drivers of Change” award.

2. Our RESEARCH:
🔬 aims to improve the health of our community, with a special focus on TB and HIV;
🔬 we have successfully completed over 60 studies, with sponsors including The Gates Foundation, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, IAVI;
🔬 our adolescent focus has earned us international recognition. Several high profile international visitors have praised the work done at our site.

3. YOUTH PROGRAM:
🎓 led by the dynamic Meleza Mangena;
🎓 empowers the youth through programs focused on leadership development, life skills, computer skills, tutoring, homework assistance;
🎓 these initiatives are aimed at nurturing adolescents to become better prepared for the workplace and life in general.

Be Part is a clinical research centre, rooted in the community of Mbekweni.

Our After Hour Clinic SERVES the lives of our people.
Our Research SAVES lives.
Our Youth Program STRENGTHENS lives of the young and vulnerable.

Be Part: After Hours, Research, Youth.

26/05/2026

Hats off to Mbekweni, a little township in Paarl, outside Cape Town.

What makes Mbekweni so special? Five reasons to celebrate Mbekweni:

1. A place of RESPECT: where mutual respect is woven into the Xhosa fabric of addressing elders, of greeting and speaking. Where hospitality is cherished. A place where high value is placed on the well-being of the community (“ubuntu”).
2. A place where people show RESILIENCE. Surviving struggles against TB and HIV. Against poverty and malnutrition. Political struggles. Struggles against storms, floods, and heat waves, overcrowding, crime, shack fires ...
3. A place where people were forcibly RELOCATED from the western side of the 300 km long Berg River: Mbekweni is part of “Paarl East”, a geographical legacy from the 1950s Group Areas Act.
4. A place where illegal dumpsites have been REVITALISED into pretty public spaces. Thanks to Siyabonga Stengana and Keep Mbekweni Clean, who have recycled waste in creative ways and repurposed old tyres.
5. A place where several icons have REDEFINED the identity of Mbekweni. One such icon is Dr Sidima Kabanyane: The first PhD graduate from Mbekweni (Organic chemistry). Drakenstein municipal manager. Freedom fighter. Mathematics teacher at Desmond Mpilo Tutu school. Author of several books about his beloved township.

Be Part is proud to be part of this community, having contributed the past 20 years to the health and empowerment of its people.

Hats off to Mbekweni. A place of Respect.

19/05/2026

Radical excruciating surgery was once a popular treatment for TB.
If you could collapse the infected lung, it was thought, you would starve the TB germs of air so the cavities could rest and heal.

Popular procedures were:
1. Artificial Pneumothorax: injection of air into the pleural space.
2. Removal of ribs: brutal surgery causing an inward collapse of the chest wall.
3. Plombage: wax or ping pong-type balls were inserted into the pleural cavity.
4. Phrenic nerve crush: this paralysed the diaphragm, restricting lung movement.

All these radical procedures aimed to rest the infected lungs. They were slightly more effective than the current treatment of choice at that time: simple bedrest. At home, in a TB hospital or a sanitorium.

Then Streptomycin (1944) and INH (1952) were discovered. These drugs, and the others that followed, could kill the TB bacilli, arresting the damage caused by TB.

Within the next decade, thanks to the vaccine candidates of Gates Medical Research Institute and IAVI, novel vaccines could trigger our immune systems to recognise and destroy TB, resisting TB infection after exposure. Be Part Yoluntu Centre and our participant community are proud to play our part in these studies.

In summary, the management of TB has evolved the past 100 years:
From REST (Bedrest)
to Lung REST (Surgery)
to ARREST of Tb Bacteria (Drugs)
to building immunity to RESIST Tb (Vaccines).

Which means quite literally that the REST is history.

12/05/2026

Be Part has many-a-great Nurse
Checking events from good to adverse,
Injecting compassion and care
To all who do share their air
Without them, we would be much the worse.

On International Nurses Day, Be Part pays tribute to our dynamic team of research nursing sisters:
Sisters Candise Hans, Nina Koegelenberg and Lianda Pretorius. 🥳
Their dedication and service are deeply appreciated by our staff and community.

# internationalnursesday

29/04/2026

A research nurse should be a protocol-driven perfectionist,

Driven by an obsession for data accuracy.

So is there place for a creative spirit like Sr Lianda Pretorius?
Someone who was once a soprano in a famous children’s choir.
A flower arranger, chef, adventurer. A mother to two sons, one who is an under-23 Sharks rugby player.
A nurse who has been a sales rep for Bayer | Pharmaceuticals, an estate agent for Pam Golding Properties?

Is there place in such a data-driven environment for a free spirit with a beautiful smile? A natural leader and community builder?
The answer is a resounding YES.

Because the ultimate role of a good research nurse is to build healthy bridges between scientific research and patient care.

Thanks to research nurses like Sr Lianda, Be Part’s clinical trials not only display accurate data collection. But the participants also enjoy excellent patient-centered care. And care is at the heart of good research-driven healthCARE.

20/04/2026

Community engagement is not about running ahead to show people the way
It is not standing back to have a better view of people’s many failings
It is not dragging people on a path they don’t want to walk
It is not about removing the stones along their path
It is not about financing a new road.

Real engagement is with real people
Walking on the road traveled by the people
Leaning in to really listen and learn from one another
True community engagement is walking alongside the people
Different voices maybe, diverse instruments, but together: one beautiful song.

See how we walk alongside OUR community @ www.bepart.co.za

14/04/2026

In Russia, it was called the Polish disease;
In Poland, it was the Turkish disease;
Turks called it the Christian disease.

Doctors call it the great imitator.
Our rural population call it the “city disease”.
In South Africa it is “vuilsiekte”: the dirty disease.

Syphilis.

It seems it is never the fault of one’s own country, or its people. There must be someone else to blame, another nationality, ethnicity, the other sexual partner. It can’t be us.

The instinct to find a scapegoat is core to human nature: “othering”. We need someone to blame, especially if the victim is marginalised by society, whether through nationality, ethnicity or social class:

🕎 Diabetes was once called a Jewish disease (by the Americans);
👣 Plague was blamed on Blacks living in District Six (actually caused by the British);
💰 TB was said to be caused by the poor (TB is caused by poverty, NOT the poor).

Older “treatments” for Syphilis included a public whipping at the hospital, on admission and discharge. For 500 years Mercury was the extremely toxic and barbaric treatment for Syphilis. It was felt moral degenerates who contracted Syphilis, deserved painful humiliating treatment.

Victims were mocked for this shameful “venereal” disease, named after Venus, the goddess of love: “One night with Venus, is followed by a lifetime with Mercury”.

In 2026, much has changed. Penicillin is an effective treatment, resulting in less serious tertiary disease. And less deaths.

But Syphilis is still a disease shrouded in social stigma: it either results in the denialist blame game described above. Or a paralysing shame.
The result is the same: unnecessary delay in effective treatment.

At Be Part, we have run an award-winning weekly After Hours Clinic. A free service to our community. We have managed 16 000 clients the past 17 years.
And treated 500 Syphilis patients the past year alone.

They have all been treated effectively.
And with dignity.

10/04/2026

Why is TB 4 times more common in townships like Mbekweni?

Compared with the nearby suburbs of Paarl.

TB is a “social disease” (Dr Virchow, 1840).
A disease of the POOR: the average household in Mbekweni survives on less than R 5 000 pm. Almost six times lower than the average household income in Paarl.

The result is 4 social causes that drive our TB pandemic in P-O-O-R areas like Mbekweni:

P-rotein deficiency. Proteins are our most expensive macronutrient, and often a luxury for the poor who rely on energy-dense starches as their staple. The malnourished poor also lack Vitamins A and D, making them vulnerable to TB.

O-vercrowding. Mbekweni has a population density of 15 000 residents / sq km, 4 times the Paarl average. Shacks, backyard dwellers, informal settlements and over-full houses all make the spread of TB that much easier.

O-ut of work. Almost ½ of Mbekweni’s people are unemployed. Lack of work and income spells poverty, which causes TB. And TB often causes people to lose their work, and become poorer.

R-educed access to Healthcare. Mbekweni has a variety of public, private and NGO facilities that serve the health needs of the community.
But, unlike affluent communities who can access private care, the limited public healthcare resources of Mbekweni will always be stretched, causing long waits and delayed treatment.

These 4 factors are the main reason the POOR are more vulnerable to TB.
So, what can we do?

Be Part’s humble response?
1. After Hours Clinic. This award-winning free service to the community has tested almost 16 000 clients to date, and managed over 800 people who have tested HIV-positive.
2. Yoluntu Youth Centre. Led by Ms Meleza Mangena, the centre empowers the youth of Mbekweni by providing upskilling programs that better prepare them for the marketplace.
3. TB vaccine trials. Vaccines are one of the most effective tools for improving health and reducing poverty. Less TB should improve the health and holistic wellbeing of Mbekweni. Here the work of Gates Foundation and IAVI are to be commended.

But an injection was never intended to be the cure for the underlying structural pains of poverty. And the misery it causes.

That is OUR job.
Read www.bepart.co.za

30/03/2026

Mbekweni was meant to be a place of respect ...

But its history was once a story of DIS-respect.

😢 1950s: Black People were forced out of their homes in Paarl due to the Group Areas Act. And relocated to Mbekweni.
Hostels for men only. A segregated suburb for Black people only. Designated for migrants from Eastern Cape and white Paarl suburbs. Marginalized people.
Mbekweni, a place of indignity and disrespect.

🌍 2000s: Large Influx of migrants. But this time from African countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi, Burundi, DRC and Somalia. This introduced cultural tensions – even resulting in xenophobic conflict in 2008 – which has necessitated bridge-building of reconciliation and mutual respect.
Mbekweni, a place of tolerance and acceptance.

✅ 2026: Mbekweni still endures scars from its history: poverty, unemployment, high-density living, TB and crime.
But despite this, Mbekweni is living up to the Xhosa meaning of its name: a “place of respect”.
A place where mutual respect is woven into the Xhosa fabric of addressing elders, of greeting and speaking. Where hospitality is cherished. A place where high value is placed on the well-being of the community (“ubuntu”). Where celebrations and bereavement are shared.
Mbekweni, a place of Respect.

At Be Part, we are grateful to our participant community of Mbekweni. A place of respect.
www.bepart.co.za

Be Part Yoluntu Centre

09/06/2026

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26/05/2026

19/05/2026

12/05/2026

29/04/2026

20/04/2026

14/04/2026

10/04/2026

30/03/2026

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Monday	08:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	08:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	08:00 - 17:00
Thursday	08:00 - 17:00
Friday	08:00 - 16:00