The Johannesburg child protection unit has failed to act on a seemingly watertight case, reports Stuart Hess
HE stands on a Hillbrow street corner, selling sweets to children. To the unsuspecting, Isaac Tshipe is just another street vendor; but to four-year-old Thembi (not her real name) he is the man who raped and assaulted her one night in a local hotel.
Five witnesses have identified Tshipe as the paedophile rapist – one says he saw him on top of the child. He denies the accusations. But Tshipe’s neighbour, who wants to remain anonymous, says Tshipe regularly takes girls to his room at the nearby Fairmont Hotel.
Thembi’s story, which the Mail & Guardian told last month, was handed on a plate to the Johannesburg child protection unit (CPU) office last October by South African Stop Child Abuse (Sasca), a child welfare agency. A medical report was later added to the docket.
This week, the unit was also offered a taped confession, extracted from Tshipe minutes after he was pulled off the girl by Sasca officials.
In it, he says: “I was having sex with her. Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me.”
But Sergeant Herbert Mntambo, who is investigating Thembi’s case for the CPU, said he was “not interested” in the tape when the M&G offered it to him this week.
The CPU’s reluctance contrasts sharply with its normal stance – that it is virtually powerless to combat child abuse, because it is understaffed or underpaid.
After Sasca officials had found Tshipe with the girl at the Diplomat Hotel in Johannesburg, they took him to the police headquarters at John Vorster Square, where they laid a charge against him, and handed over a copy of the taped confession. He was released soon afterwards.
Mntambo said he could not act because he did not “have a statement from the victim and the hospital has not sent us a medical report”.
He had not made further inquiries about the case since February. He said he would immediately contact the doctor to obtain the medical report but added: “I doubt very much if your case will proceed. You must not make this investigation more difficult than it already is.”
The district surgeon at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, Dr Thamsanqa Mbovane, said in his statement: “The child was definitely penetrated.” This statement is attached to the docket sitting on Mntambo’s desk.
Thembi’s mother, who sells beer in Hillbrow, sold her child for sex for R200 a time. The child endured several “customers” from last January until September, when Sasca found her. She is still receiving psychiatric and medical treatment – for injuries to her genitals.
“This scenario is typical of the CPU. They will not act unless a social worker or the media persistently phone them,” Sasca president Tutu Mgulwa says. “If this happens with one case what happens to the many others which nobody inquires about?”
Glenys van Halter, the co-ordinator for anti-child abuse group Children in Violence, said CPU dockets were often lost. “They are not making an effort to fight child abuse, they are dragging their feet,” she added.
It was announced this week that the CPU will enjoy a budget increase of R2,25- million to R19,25-million – a 13,2% rise – for its 1997/98 financial year. Latest CPU figures, however, show the growth in its caseload far outstrips its budget gains. It dealt with nearly 36 000 cases of child abuse last year, more than double the number for 1993, with rape cases rising nearly 40% on the 1995 figure to 13 859 incidents, and sodomy cases jumping more than 35%. And those are just the cases reported.