Politics

The Acting Chief Whip of the Majority Party (the African National Congress) moved without notice (in February 2002): That the House -

(1) notes the shockingly high incidence of rape and abuse of children and babies across our country;
(2) also notes that South Africa is not only a signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but has also passed some of the world's most progressive laws aimed at promoting and protecting those rights;
(3) believes that each incident of rape and abuse of children is not simply an isolated event, but an intrinsic party of the historic abuse of children that has manifested itself over the centuries in -
(a) child slavery;
(b) child labour;
(c) child pornography;
(d) the child trade;
(e) hunger, poverty and disease;
(f) abuse; and
(g) rape;

(4) agrees to take the fight to the perpetrators by -
(a) holding public hearings on child rape and abuse to analyse its causes, and inform our counter-strategies appropriately;
(b) mobilising all our communities and the public sector to fight and expose this scourge; and
(c) campaigning for the harshest punishment permissible under the Constitution;

(5) reminds South Africans that this unacceptable social behaviour goes against the grain of the cultural traditions of all our people; and

(6) calls on all South Africans, as individuals, sectors and communities, to unite in the fight against child rape and abuse.

Agreed to.

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