CHILDLINE
SOUTH AFRICA

National coordinator: Joan van Niekerk

Telephone/Fax number  (+27) (0)31 563 5718

Email address: childlinesa@iafrica.com or

www.childlinesa.com

RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI’S ARTICLE – SUNDAY TRIBUNE

October 3^rd 2004

8^th October 2004

Dear Mr President

I read with great sadness your response to Charlene’s Smith’s article commenting on the crime statistics, the latter re-published in the Sunday Tribune of October 3^rd 2004.

We are presently celebrating our tenth year of democracy in South Africa – and we do indeed have much to celebrate and we do applaud what government and civil society has achieved together in this past decade.

However some concerning challenges continue to face us and require our honest acceptance of the problems, and commitment and action directed at their resolution. The problem of child abuse, and in particular child sexual assault in South Africa, is indisputably a serious and tragic crisis. In this tenth year of democracy one would like to think that the present generation of children are growing up in a country which effectively promotes children’s rights and safe opportunities for growth and development.

Instead of acknowledging the gravity and grim consequences of not addressing problem of child abuse and rape in South Africa, and then taking the debate into a search for solutions that would afford children a childhood free from abuse and exploitation, and adults – both men and women – the freedom from sexual violence, you have distorted Ms Smith’s comments and racialised them. In no part of Ms Smith’s article do I see her blaming black African men for the problem of rape. As quoted from your response, her comment “Here (in Africa) (AIDS) is spread primarily by heterosexual sex – spurred by men’s attitudes towards women” does not target black men specifically. Certainly our experience at all our Childline service points across the country indicates that the rape and sexual assault of children knows no racial boundaries and most certainly all racial, cultural and language groups are represented among both victims and perpetrators.

Your statement that “crime tends to be concentrated in depressed and poor urban areas” does correlate with Childline’s experience of reported crimes against children and it saddens us immensely that children who may already be living with the reality and the consequences of poverty also have to live with a higher level of vulnerability to victimisation. However it should also be noted that rural children do lack access to opportunities to report crimes against them as police stations are frequently some distance away from where families live, children lack access to telephones, and with most abuse happening in the child’s own home or homestead, adults may “gate keep” the child’s access to opportunities to report.

Therefore the urban-rural comparison of crime statistics as recorded through reports to the SAPS needs to seen in the above light.

In his article in the Sunday Independent “Police stats: ‘Get all the facts before you criticise’” Selby Bokaba, the spokesperson for the National Commissioner of Police, also castigates organisations who work in the field of child abuse for questioning the official figures. He then proceeds to unpack the original release of the crime statistics, acknowledging the apparently unintentional distortion of the statistics, stating that “there was miscommunication with the people responsible for putting the figures on the website and the term Child Abuse was again incorrectly used”.

The figures he then proceeds to give in his article are the crime statistic “estimates” (his words) relating to the abuse and exploitation of children:

Crime	Children aged 1-12 years	Children aged 13 – 18 years	Children aged 0 – 18 years
Murder	317	833	1150
Attempted Murder	361	1654	2015
Assault GBH	3121	21067	24188
Common assault	4495	27813	32308
Rape	7488	14132	21620
	15782	65 499	81284

These figures do not include indecent assault on children. Indecent assault can, in terms of its present legal definition in South Africa include anal and oral sexual penetration of children in an abusive situations and, if these figures were included in Mr Bokaba’s statistics, would considerably increase the official child abuse statistics.

So, Mr President, however one adds up the figures, official or unofficial, we have a serious problem relating to child abuse in South Africa. It does not help abused children or the cause of prevention if we start getting into arguments and accusations of racism and/or interpretation of what we have in front of us.

also wish to assure you and Mr Bokaba and the Police Commissioner who he represents, that organisations in the child abuse field do not comment on crime statistics relating to child abuse because we “do not want to do or say anything that would shut the sponsorship tap from flowing” but because we are truly concerned about the South African children who we serve. In fact we wish we had a flowing tap of sponsorship!

he real issues are that we are overwhelmed with the task of prevention of child abuse and caring for traumatised children, and realise that without accurate statistics we cannot plan service delivery effectively.

It must be said that those who work in this field are struggling to manage to provide services for the thousands of traumatised children in our care and to develop and implement effective prevention programmes with the limited resources that we have and that we desperately need government to take our hands and support us in this role.

I appeal to you Mr President, not to divert attention away from the urgent need to protect and care for South Africa’s children with your accusations of “psychosis” but to join us in facing the challenge of providing safe environments, free from abuse, for this country’s future – our children.