jailed
Gaye Davis and Gustav Thiel
Three-year old Patronda Kelebogile Morwe was found dead in a zinc bath in her home in Ramatlabama Village near Mafikeng in the North West Province this month. She had been raped and strangled. A boy aged 13 has been arrested.
A fortnight ago on the Cape Flats in Cape Town, the body of five-year-old Llewellyn Erasmus was found hanging in bushes near Kalkfontein. A photograph in the Cape Argus showed only his feet, barely brushing the long grass. Police later arrested a 16- year-old who they said had confessed to the killing, in an apparent act of revenge against the boy’s father.
Eleven youths from Factreton, also in Cape Town, face charges of murdering 15-year-old Jonathan Settie (see main article).
These cases are not isolated.
While the police keep no statistics of child-on-child violence, a study by the Human Sciences Research Council of 4 606 crimes against South African children showed that in 18,5% of cases the offenders were less than 19 years old. In 28,6% of cases, the offenders were under 21.
The study focused on cases, ranging from abuse to murder, reported to police child protection units countrywide from July 1994 to June 1995.
A senior HSRC researcher, Evanthe Schurink, says that as most child abuse cases go unreported, “This could indicate that child-on-child violence is a far bigger problem than is currently thought.”
Why do children do it?
Unisa criminologist Professor Anna van der Hoven divides children who kill into three broad categories: children who were themselves abused; children who are profoundly disturbed; and those who are anti-social and show signs of psychopathy.
But most of the cases mentioned here involve children in their first major brush with the law.
Terry Dowdall, director of the Child Guidance Unit at the University of Cape Town, cites the problem – and responsibility for it – close to home. “Children exposed to violence – by the popular media, such as television, by gang violence or violence in the home, get used to the concept.
“If they are not shown that such behaviour is unacceptable, they see violence as the province of the powerful and that people who perpetrate it are feared and in some ways, looked up to.
“The decline of the extended family and the disintegration of the nuclear family means lone parents who don’t have the same resources. The absence of a strong and loved father inevitably leaves a child open to gravitating towards other available role models – whoever will give them some acceptance and admission to a group.
“The breakdown of the extended and the nuclear family, the decline of pro-social groups like the Boy Scouts and church groups has left the ground open for anti- social groupings like gangs.”
Children who kill, but who are not hardened criminals, should not be locked up, says Dowdall. Jail would lead to their rapid induction as gang members or as older prisoners’ sex objects.
“It’s important they come to accept they have committed a violent, atrocious act – that what they have done is a bad and evil thing. They have to be confronted with the actual consequences of their actions and must make real reparations to their victims’ families so that what they have done doesn’t secretly become a badge of merit. The community has to come together to prevent that and be involved in the rehabilitation of these children. It is important that there are meetings where they are told what the community thinks about what they have done.
“Their parents should say what they feel and so should those of the murdered children. Together, the families should search for reparation. Before a community can reclaim its streets from crime they have to reclaim the hearts and minds of their children.
“There must be a common acceptance of what’s right and wrong and it must be publicly confirmed,” Dowdall says.
“There is enormous power in the censure of a community – and very little indication that incarceration in the South African jail system would do anything but further harm.”