An initiative by the child-welfare NGO Save the Children is managing to overcome the timidity of urban dwellers in Swaziland about ”getting involved” in neighbours’ domestic disputes.
”Looking the other way and turning a deaf ear to screams and cries for help next door have led to tragedies. We are giving people a way to get involved while allowing them to remain anonymous,” says Elizabeth Kgalolo, programme director at Save the Children.
Like urban dwellers the world over, Swazis along the densely populated corridor between Mbabane, the capital, and Manzini, the country’s commercial hub 35km to the south-east, are reluctant to interfere in other people’s domestic problems.
”They fear being rebuffed and insulted, and told to mind their own business. But set against those fears is the anguish people feel when they witness the suffering of children in particular. They want to do something, but they don’t wish to be victimised themselves,” says Pholilie Dlamini, a social welfare worker in Manzini.
People in all towns can now report possible abuse situations by phone to a Save the Children team comprising a man and woman.
”We are busy all the time — we have too many cases but this is good, because it means people want to use us,” says Gugu Mavuso in Manzini. ”We have saved lives,” says Mavuso’s partner, Sandile Nsimandze. ”We have removed children from homes where they are sexually abused; some children are physically abused.”
Screams heard by neighbours may also be the result of psychological abuse. The Manzini team’s primary referral service is the RFM hospital, the main medical centre, which has a social welfare unit specialising in medical and psychological treatment of abuse victims.
Save the Children teams cannot remove endangered children from their homes. They call on social welfare workers like Prudence Hlatshwako, employed by Manzini’s city council.
”Only a government welfare worker from the ministry of health can relocate an abused child from a home with a court order, but the process takes time,” Hlatshwako says. ”In emergency situations we call on Swagaa [the Swaziland Action Group against Abuse] … they have a working relationship with the police to take action.”
Sexually abused girls are placed in a shelter in the northern town of Pigg’s Peak or Bunya in central Swaziland.
Because the number of investigative teams is limited and case loads are multiplying, the initiative has expanded this year to include educating communities.
”We are doing workshops for even rural and peri-rural people, teaching them about children’s rights and counselling women to leave abuse situations,” says Mavuso. The trained volunteers then go from house to house, not to spy but to pass on the anti-abuse message, with parents taught the boundary between discipline and abuse. — Irin