National Council of Provinces (NCOP) Chairperson,
Chairpersons for Select Committees,
Members of Parliament,
Comrades,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Please, allow me to begin with optimism in the midst of the horrendous violent attacks, abuse and murder of our children and youth, which we have particularly seen in these past weeks in South Africa.
Chairperson, it is a fact that the ANC-led Government has done, and still doing, everything in its power since 1994, to protect its children and young people, giving them priority, putting children at the heart of all our national policies.
Indeed, South Africa is one of the few countries in our continent that have aggressively pursued the idea of citizenship, which includes children and youth.
The now formed Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, is one important structure that this ANC-led Government mandates to formally articulate and recognize the aspirations, needs and conditions of our children and youth in South Africa.
But, today in this house, we find ourselves debating, discussing and reminding our peoples, our communities and our entire nation that, “a society that does not care about the well-being of its children is a society without a future”.
Yes, Chairperson these are the wise words of a novelist from Cameroon, Calixhe Beyale, words, we as the South African nation, need to quickly find some resonance in them, lest we plunge our future to doomsayers and to ultimate doom.
If we just gloomily look at the three young victims that have been killed, respectively, on 7th October, 11th October and 12th October, then we realize that, they are all confirmed as being under the age of 9!
And, if we care to probe further on the nature of their respective murders, we will find three startling facts.
Fact number one: family members, relatives, parents or mothers account for most cases of horrific child abuses. On 12th October 2011, a mother disposed her newly born baby in a dam.
Fact number two: the abuser is someone whom the child is familiar with and trusts, using the child’s dependency/vulnerability and affection to extort.
On 7th October 2011, Athenkosi Nkone, the four year old, was called for sweets into the perpetrator’s shack, who slit the child’s throat and put the child’s body into a suitcase.
And, fact number three: child molesters silence their young victims as cunning and as ruthless as they can. On 11th October 2011, Zikhona Qhayi, the 8 year old, was strangled after being sexually assaulted.
This brutal perpetrator sexually harmed and, then killed Zikhona to silence her forever from telling anyone about the molestation.
Now, we are here in this House, asking ourselves, asking our whole nation: what had prompted these monster child-molesters and killers to steal the blessing of innocence, and to replace that innocence with unimaginable fear, hurt and forever lasting damage to the young bodies of these children?
Indeed, others would immediately reply that, all gender-based violence is derived or caused by gender inequalities in a patriarchal society.
Some of us will surely go further and say, the socio-economic hardships are the cause of all these social ills and evils we see today.
And, when we start asking: what is the first line of defense against child abuse and killings, some of us here will indeed say, people must bring an abused child to the attention of appropriate authorities. Some would say, the police must do their job, and apprehend these monster child monsters and killers.
Chairperson, at best, all of the above reasons may contribute in preventing an abused child from suffering further harm. But, all in all, it is what I call, a late intervention.
Colleagues and Comrades, our message today to this house, as the Ministry of Police, and, in my capacity as the Deputy Minister of Police, is: the greater good is to prevent child abuse before it occurs, period! Nothing beats pro-active solutions and interventions.
What do I mean by this proactive intervention? First, all primary professionals such as police officers, teachers, nurses, day-care workers, who regularly come into contact with children, must be adequately trained in child abuse recognition and prevention.
Secondly, centres such as Thuthuzela centres and SAPS Child Protection, Family Violence and Sexual Offences Units, must be utilized maximally to assist prepare communities and families for the job of non-abusive child rearing. These facilities must be used to equip parents with adequate knowledge and parenting skills.
Thirdly, the SAPS Women’s Network and Men for Change, must partner with other civil society to bolster a type of community that is supportive, a community that can provide children with the kind of safe and nurturing environment they need to grow into healthy, self-sufficient adults.
Chairperson, I can already hear some people say, oh, easy said than done!
But, Colleagues and Comrades, we must acknowledge one thing in this house: yes, our respective capacities and responsibilities as Members of Parliament, Ministers and Deputy Ministers, public servants (nurses, teachers, police officers, etc), are very clear under the Constitution and related laws of the Republic.
But saving young lives from abuse surely must be more than statutory-based protections of a child. Saving a young life is, fundamentally, about doing what is right, and not what is legal.
It is about stressing the need to revive our fundamental value of saying: “my child is your child”, and “a child is raised by the whole village”.
What is right is a child being provided by his/her community and family, and opportunity to grow up healthy and safe, and as such, the whole nation of South Africa has no greater responsibility than the protection of its children against all forms of violence and abuse.
Central to this obligation by the community, are action-oriented Government structures and programmes of education and advocacy to provide the necessary supportive resources for ensuring the safety of our children, and to restore the dignity of those who survived the horrible ordeal of abuse and violence.
Innovative Government programmes such as the Victim Empowerment Programme (VEP) are such structures where survivors of child violence and abuse can receive immediate and long-term care and counseling.
This programme not only assists the police by providing a centralized facility where police investigators can meet with the victim and gather evidence.
These are also centres that bring together all relevant legal and medical agencies and departments into a single centre, which provides a better assistance for the victim, and also facilitates criminal investigation.
The right thing to do in these VEP centres is for people delegated to help the survivors of these sexual-related crimes, to be motivated, compassionate, diligent and dedicated in their work.
We always urge that public servants’ motivation must be premised upon the belief that the child survivor has the right to privacy, safety and human dignity.
They must know that it is extremely difficult for a child to report sexual abuse. The child may not even understand that what has happened is not normal or accepted.
Hence we are urging those that are working with children to be aware that they should always be alert for any opportunity to aid the child who attempts to disclose or report abuse. The child’s need for support and protection must come first.
Because we know that, many adults have a tendency to overlook, discount or disbelieve allegations of sexual abuse especially when the perpetrator/molester is a family member or a law-abiding seemingly respectable, nice and normal person.
We must know that children rarely lie or invent stories on their own about being sexually abused.
Chairperson, now-and-again we plead with our communities to work together with the police to fight crime of all types, because it is a fact that, police officers can never be in all street corners, in all schools, in all homes, to fight the scourge of child abuse.
But yet again, the opposition always unnecessary rebukes the ANC-led Government for police inaptness to fight child abuse and implement the Domestic Violence Act.
But, this same opposition deliberately forgets one thing: the work of all police officers is one of the top-rated professions for job stress. The police work is not only high risk in terms of the physical dangers of the job, but also high risk in terms emotional dangers because of the gruesome discoveries they do on a daily basis.
For instance, last month I met with the SAPS Nyanga Cluster Commander and his detectives who were investigating the case of a 21 year old victim, Nontsikelelo Tyatyeka, whose discomposed body was found in a rubbish bin, a year later after she was murdered by her childhood friend, simply because she was a lesbian.
I asked the lead detective who discovered the body, whether he received any counselling after discovering the almost skeletal body, and to my horror, he said no. As police leadership, we had urged Police Management to make sure that our police officers are well nurtured and their general wellness sustained at all times.
Extreme exhaustion and shock can cause a police officer a loss of sleep, heightened anxiety and lack of good diet, thus yielding to an irritable, aggressive and short-tempered police officer.
Through the SAPS Wellness Programme that will be rolled out in all Cluster Police Stations, we will make sure that the wellness needs of our police officers are fulfilled, so that our men and women in blue, continue to do a sterling work of reducing all types of crime in our country.
In conclusion, Chairperson, as this ANC-led Government continues to respond to the calls of our people that the public wants a more visible police force, patrolling their local areas against crimes of all forms, we are also calling on communities, parents, community leaders, and all those professionals working with children, to assess community risk and protective factors associated with child abuse, and to partner with Police to prevent and combat these heinous crimes against children.
As Government we are saying, everyone of us have the role to play in helping our children and youth to acquire quality life-skills so that South Africa could one-day be counted as one of the best places in the world for a child to enjoy its childhood and a young person to enjoy being a youth.
I thank you!
For enquiries, please contact:
Zweli Mnisi, Spokesperson to the Minister and Deputy Minister of Police
Cell: 082 045 4024
