Nothing testifies to the mess our society is in as horrifically as the statistics on the abuse of children. Figures released this week by the police remind us of the shocking toll: 34 000 crimes against children reported between January and November last year, including 14 223 cases of rape, 3 451 of indecent assault and 3 584 of serious assault. More than 1 300 children disappeared from their homes during the same period.
The figures were released in the context of an announcement that 20 police social workers were being trained to support investigations into crimes against children. Without any disrespect towards the child protection unit, which seems to be doing its best to tackle the problem with limited resources, the announcement smacks of an exercise in bailing out the ocean with a pail.
Far more settled societies than our own are taking radical steps to deal with the problem of child abuse. In Britain, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is currently at the centre of controversy over a hard-hitting television advertising campaign designed to shock the public out of its inertia on the issue.
Described as Britain’s biggest-ever charity advertising campaign, the television advertisements are to be supplemented by a direct-mail campaign reaching 23-million homes. Corporate backers are providing much of the funding, with the computer giant, Microsoft, taking an admirable lead.
Obviously the problem in South Africa is one which deserves government attention. But our government is so swamped with demands on the public purse arising from a myriad of social problems that it is perhaps unrealistic to expect a dramatic new initiative from it.
Corporate South Africa, on the other hand, might do well to emulate their British counterparts. Perhaps the breweries, whose products make such a contribution to the problem, could take a lead in this regard. Perhaps Nelson Mandela – who has shown much concern in the past for the hardships of the young – could give it his attention.
But, wherever the leadership comes from, our national sense of self-respect demands that something be done about child abuse as a matter of urgency.
Save the rainforest
At a ground-breaking summit hosted by Cameroon President Paul Biya and the World Wide Fund for Nature this week, five Central African heads of state signed the Yaonde declaration – committing their countries to protecting vast tracts of forest in the Congo Basin.
Central Africa is home to the second- largest tropical rainforest in the world, but in the past decade the forest has been destroyed at an alarming rate. This is not only an ecological disaster, but has far- reaching implications for humans.
Scientists recently discovered that HIV-1, the most common Aids virus, has its roots in a subspecies of chimpanzee found in the African rainforest. They believe the virus passed into humans when hunters nicked themselves as they butchered their kills. The chimps could be the key to a cure or a vaccine, so they must be kept alive and studied, ideally in the wild.
But chimps and gorillas are victims of the growing taste for “bushmeat” on the tables of the economic elites in Central Africa. European and Asian logging companies, in a quest to satisfy demands for hardy furniture, flooring and veneers, are not only chopping down the trees but opening up vast tracts of the forest to hunters and entrepreneurs.
Tourism – often punted as the saviour of the great apes – is being killed off by civil war in the region, and was dealt a heavy blow with the recent murders of eight tourists in Uganda.
These are some of the problems the Yaonde declaration plans to deal with, by establishing new trans-border conservation initiatives. It also aims to protect millions of hectares of forest and create new reserves.
These are welcome developments, but some nifty footwork will be needed to prevent them becoming just “parks on paper”.
Researchers working in a reserve in Cameroon say conservationists have achieved “next to zero” in protecting its great apes and forest elephants. The park is surrounded by logging camps, there are up to 100 semi-permanent hunting camps inside the reserve itself, and some hunters boast they get their guns from high government officials.
Guilty silence
Sylvia Dlomo-Jele passed away last Saturday, only a few weeks after hearing confessions of how the brutal execution of her son, Sicelo, in 1988 was the work of his comrades, not of apartheid police as was widely believed at the time.
It is tragic that Dlomo-Jele should have died without knowing the full truth behind her son’s murder: the self-confessed killers failed to tell the Truth and Reconciliation Commission who ordered the killing and the real reason why.
What rubs salt in this wound is the deadly silence that has followed Dlomo-Jele’s death. That the African National Congress itself – to whose ideals Dlomo-Jele dedicated her entire life – has also joined in this quorum of silence is beyond our comprehension.