Emeka Nwandiko
With a sharp intake of breath, followed by an oath, Aubrey flicks his left wrist and casts to the concrete floor a pair of dice. A three and four is scored, notching up his winnings to R50. He is all smiles: considering that when he began the game of ama dice he had just R2, it’s an extraordinarily lucky day for the street kid.
The loot will be used to buy food that will eventually be shared with a motley crew of five street urchins whom he now regards as his family. Their destitution is for all to see in the informal settlement which they have formed in Yeoville’s main park.
Aubrey was 14 years old when he left his real family in Thembisa, Gauteng, just more than a year ago, after many years of being physically abused by his parents.
The South African Law Commission announced late last month that child abuse is increasing by 30% a year. And according to experts in child homelessness, the number of youths who run away from home as a result of abuse is also increasing.
At present the Department of Welfare and Population Development estimates that between 10 000 and 20 000 of the nation’s young are homeless. Nine out of 10 runaways are boys, according to Street Wise, an NGO that seeks ways to reunite runaways with their parents.
Thirteen-year-old Steven does not know how long he has been living on the streets of Johannesburg, but he vividly remembers why he ran away: “My stepfather hit me with anything he could lay his hands on whenever he was drunk.” Another 13-year-old says hi s drunken mother often beat him with a car fan-belt whenever money went missing from home.
So Aubrey and his gang have decided to gamble their lives on the mean streets of Johannesburg, where they have to face the uncertainty of the elements and the hostility of the population at large.
The day begins for Aubrey in a hospital, where he is treated for a centimetres-long gash on the head. He was assaulted, he says, by a security guard in the early hours of the morning for no apparent reason.
According to Jill Kruger, an anthropologist at Unisa who has studied homeless youths for 15 years, such attacks on homeless youths are not uncommon. She says there are two main reasons for this: “People have a psychological fear of street children, as th ey have not been brought up in a normal family environment”; and they can get away with it, because the streetchildren don’t have the means to fig ht back.
Kruger says streetchildren are also vulnerable to sexual abuse and a host of diseases ranging from scabies to Aids and brain damage, as a result of being continuously “bombed out” by substance abuse.
Aubrey and his friends can be seen frequently ducking their heads into the insides of their coats to take gulps of glue fumes from plastic milkshake bottles. It helps keep hunger at bay.
Kruger observes that this addiction is part of what is called “flight syndrome. These kids are in the habit of escaping from reality because they cannot come to terms with dealing with the problems they face. It it easier for them to opt out than take re sponsibility for their lives.
“But in a supportive environment they can achieve a lot,” says Kruger, who is campaigning for a national forum for children, so that youths of all backgrounds can tell adults in Parliament about their needs and concerns.
Liebe Kellen, national co-ordinator at Street Wise, says it is important to get hold of runaways as soon as possible. “The sooner we can make contact with their parents, the better. If new arrivals [to the streets] can be reunited with their families, th e chances of success are greater because they have not been sufficiently involved in street culture.”
When Aubrey is asked if he will ever return home, he says he will as long as he is not assaulted by his parents.
It is this fear runaways have of their parents that has led Iris Namo, a co-director of People’s Dialogue, which plans to open a homeless children’s unit in the near future, to call for a change in attitudes when it comes to parenting. “Children don’t wa nt to live under an iron hand. We parents are like policemen and the children don’t want to be policed.
“Children run away because they fear they will be killed. Once there is fear, there will be problems.”
She believes the high level of homelessness among black youth is a result of indigenous cultures that put the child at the bottom of the family hierarchy. “In Zulu culture, for instance, the man is the boss, the lion. When he roars, everyone must be afra id.”
Years of experience has taught Kellen that streetchildren cannot be coerced into being reunited with their families. “We try to gain their trust; everything is done on the child’s own terms. We offer a meal and a shower; if the child comes back, we discu ss ways in which we can help. This means placing them in a shelter where they are given basic education and their health is checked.
“When they are ready to talk about their experiences, we ask them if they want us to get in touch with their families.”
Once the parents are contacted, the process of truth and reconciliation begins as assessments are made of the parents.
“If there is evidence of alcohol abuse by the parents, we get in touch with other organisations that specifically deal with that issue. If parents have problems paying their child’s school fees, we will pay them directly to the institution.”
The government, for its part, is doing what it says it can in dealing with child homelessness. Helen Stark, the chief director of social welfare services at the Department of Welfare and Population Development, reveals that the government’s approach is t wo-pronged.
l In the short term, it is decentralising welfare services from the towns to the communities in the remote hinterlands of the nine provinces. This is bolstered by the tightening of standards in child care.
l In the long term, a series of pilot projects is under way which aim to change attitudes of today’s parents and tomorrow’s adults. If the individual programmes are successful, they will be introduced into the mainstream welfare services throughout the c ountry.