THOUSANDS of children are living in terrible conditions in places of safety in South Africa – often without sufficient clothing and bedding at night, without proper educational facilities and in buildings that are unhealthy and unsafe – according to a recently released government report.
Of the more than 6 000 children in reform schools, schools of industry and places of safety, more than 60% are there not because they have committed a crime or are awaiting trial, but because they have been identified by social workers as having being exposed to physical or sexual abuse, or neglect.
But when they are put in the hands of the state, they experience what Lesley du Toit, manager of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Young People at Risk which wrote the report, calls “secondary abuse”.
“Secondary abuse” can take many forms. It can be formal and systematic – the “control and punishment” approach of most institutions, where there are too few staff who are badly paid and under-trained. Under this approach children are locked in dormitories at night and have their letters read and often withheld, and their holidays at home are seen as a privilege, not a right. Many live in run-down buildings, where they sleep under soiled sheets and too-few blankets alongside reeking toilets.
The abuse can also be informal, though just as systematic. Children interviewed told of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, by staff as well as other children. The report details widespread violations of children’s rights as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN’s Rules for Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty and the Constitution.
Youngsters who attempted suicide, abused substances, mutilated themselves, were aggressive or behaved in other ways typical of troubled young people did not receive therapy, but were seen as “bad” and were usually harshly punished. While the quality of care differs widely, staff “at all levels” were found to lack experience and expertise.
Centres that previously catered for black children were found to have the worst facilities, but wide discrepancies exist generally. Girls at Le Fleur School of Industry at Faure, outside Cape Town, live in run-down buildings the principal says were declared unfit for human habitation in the 1980s.
Wind and rain blow in through broken windows; there is no heating. There are open toilets in the dormitories; the girls are routinely tested for HIV without their consent. Their education is based on an outdated curriculum; there are no recreation programmes. There are not enough uniforms to go around and those that there are are old and stained.
At Val du Charon industrial school in Wellington in the Cape on the other hand, each girl gets two sets of uniforms for weekdays, a uniform for going out on weekends, floral dresses to wear in the afternoons and track suits for winter, The school offers “excellent, market-related” courses in educare, hair-dressing and catering. The report says the difference in treatment of girls at the two schools is “inexplicable”: both previously catered exclusively for girls classified coloured and fell under the House of Representatives.
How bad things can be for children at facilities previously designated for blacks is illustrated by the report’s description of Tsheretselong Detention Centre in Bloemfontein, a place of safety that only takes children awaiting trial. It says: “sanitary conditions are unacceptable. The ablution block has broken windows, broken wash basins and broken taps.
`Human excrement was found on the floors and in the showers … a result of too few toilets available at any time … A lack of paper seems to lead to … children having to use their clothing to clean themselves”.
Children at Tsheretselong are cared for by security officers. No youth workers are employed. “The eight girls in this facility sit on a bench all day under the watchful eye of a security officer, who also accompanies them to the toilet.”
Although places of safety are intended as short-stay centres where children are assessed and given temporary care, the investigation team found children spending years in them waiting to be placed in children’s homes, foster care or schools of industry. “The committee came across children who have been waiting for placement for up to three years, or awaiting trial for up to two years. Children have been known … to wait … for up to 12 years.”
Some of the reasons for this were: social workers in agencies and institutions not writing the necessary reports or co- operating with one another; referral agency social workers “not doing anything” once the child was in a place of safety; the Deparment of Education failing to place the child; insufficient probation officers and lack of follow-up and children’s homes being full or unwilling to take children with emotional and behavioural problems.
A child at Tsheretselong awaiting trial on charges of theft was moved between the court in Harrismith and the Bloemfontein detention centre 19 times because the social worker failed to complete a report for the court.
The country has nine reform schools, 18 schools of industry and 32 places of safety. “There is no shortage of bed space for children if one reviews these state institutions as a whole,” says the report. No need, therefore, to detain children – whether sentenced or awaiting trial – in prison.
But as the report shows, the issue is more complicated than adding up the number of beds available and the number of children needing them.
Welfare Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi has taken on the task of reforming this Dickensian and inefficient system. She has the backing of her Cabinet colleagues, who expressed shock when presented with the committee’s findings last week. Cabinet has endorsed her recommendations for short-term, emergency action and longer-term measures, and individual ministers have pledged their commitment to making sure departments take the required action. But Fraser-Moleketi’s keenest champions are likely to be the children.