Baby Tshepang’s rape in October 2001 stirred the world. In that act and in the little one’s horror, much about the country became evident: the mental and physical desperation of hopeless communities like Louisvale where she was raped, the numbers of other Tshepangs across the country and the urgent need for a moral regeneration that went beyond verbiage.
Where is Tshepang now and where are we? The baby’s story is, in many ways, one of South Africa’s ills and hopes. A resilient child, she is well, but her future is not clear and her present not as comfortable as it could be.
”She is healthy, very intelligent,” says Anita Benjamien*, the mother who has accepted Tshepang into her heart and home in a Northern Cape town. ”Taking her in was our pleasure.”
For her protection she is known as Tshepang meaning ”have hope”, the name given to her in the wake of the rape ordeal. No photographs of her are generally allowed, but there is an image of the baby at the Red Cross Children’s hospital, careening about in a walking ring, arms thrown up as she follows a kindly nurse’s aide around.
It is the image of a resilient and trusting little spirit. At the hospital doctors worked to put Tshepang together; to give her a future womanhood. Surgically speaking, she was ”anatomically reconstructed”.
Every year the Red Cross Children’s hospital in Cape Town ”anatomically reconstructs” about 80 infant rape survivors for tissue and organ ruptures. The South African Medical Journal says that every year since 1991 between 400 and 500 children under 12 years old are admitted to the hospital for sexual abuse-related injuries.
Benjamien’s family took in both Tshepang and her teenaged mother, but the 18-year-old left soon after her birthday, when she was legally entitled to. ”She decided she could better improve her life if she goes working,” says Benjamien, adding that the mother phones every Saturday.
When Tshepang was discharged from the Red Cross hospital and despite the fact that hers was a story that had made international headlines, there was a struggle to find a home for her. ”We were a little scared, but no one was prepared to take her. And we decided we will make it our responsibility,” said her foster mother.
Trying to find Tshepang proved difficult. Even the provincial authorities who take abused children into their care struggled to find her. When they eventually did, it was clear that she had not been regularly monitored: they did not, for example, know that her mother had left in the first quarter of the year.
A dire shortage of social workers (7 000 public sector social workers are responsible for the nation), inadequate skills in provinces and under-funding all conspire against the effective state care of Tshepang.
While the child support grant will grow to support seven million children by 2006, its price tag leaves little room for other social services. The government knows it has a problem. ”Critical child protection services … and support services for women victims of domestic violence are chronically under-budgeted,” says the Department of Social Development’s 2002 to 2005 strategic plan.
Early next year Tshepang’s case will be reviewed: she may continue living with her foster family, be moved to another foster home, put up for adoption or be returned to her biological family. The review will be key to her future, says Dr Astrid Berg, head of the parent and infant mental health unit at the University of Cape Town.
Additional trauma can be caused by separating an infant from her mother or a foster mother. Repeatedly breaking such bonds can have negative consequences later in life. There is only so much resilience in a human soul, but with her treatment to date, the jury’s out on whether Tshepang’s country will come through for her where her family and her community have not.
In Louisvale, the devastation continues. Since Tshepang’s rape, three more children have been removed from their homes, but Pastor Johannes Stuurman of the United Congregational Church sees seedlings of hope.
The community has rejected the five men initially arrested for Tshepang’s rape, for which the mother’s former boyfriend David Potse was jailed for life. They are outcast. ”We have stood together,” Stuurman says.
Vegetable gardens and flowers are growing around many Reconstruction and Development programme houses — ”it’s a sign of newness”, says Stuurman. From this month, a safer streets campaign will provide safe houses for women and children under threat. Stuurman says he is trying to get Tshepang’s mother into a skills training project.
But local projects can only go so far. The fate of the police service’s child protection units speaks to the need for injections of resources from a national level. Three members have left the service, which is the first line of care for children in Tshepang’s position.
Democratic Alliance MP Mike Waters has undertaken a national inspection of child protection units and in Upington he found individual caseloads average between 60 and 80 a member and there were no child interviewing or play-rooms to wait in. Two bulletproof vests are shared by eight police officers and the unit’s three cars had each clocked up more than 200 000km as they cover the province’s huge terrain.
Louisvale’s and Tshepang’s is a story that can be told in every province. Almost two years to the day, Baby M suffered a similar fate in Kuils River, but the fury it sparked was only provincial. It was as if the nation has numbed itself to the challenge it faces.
Crime statistics for 2001 found that 7 500 children under 12 had reported rapes, suggesting the real figure is more than 20 000 child rapes a year. The scourge is constant — there will be more Tshepangs because the cocktail of causes behind rape must be painstakingly unravelled. Where will we be by 2014? Where will she be?
* Not her real name