The idea of children crossing borders often conjures up images of paedophile rings, clandestine smuggling operations and helpless, vulnerable children, whisked away from their loved ones.
Increasingly, however, foreign children living in South Africa are found to have left their homes willingly, in search of a better life here. Mostly the choice to leave homes awash with conflict, poverty and disease, leaves the children vulnerable to abuse and exploitation in the host county.
A report released by Save the Children United Kingdom in early November examines the struggles faced by unaccompanied migrant children (UMC) who choose to travel to countries such as South Africa, as well as the misconceptions about these children and the gaps in policy and law that make it even more difficult to address this phenomenon.
Examining countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, including Mozambique, Lesotho and Zimbab-we, the report highlights the dire circumstances that ”push” children to migrate to more prosperous countries such as South Africa. The chief ”push factors” are ”poverty, hunger, the lack of educational opportunities and the death of parents and caregivers”, says the report. At the same time the belief that children will have ”more chance of finding work or other income-earning opportunities and of going to school than if they remained in their home country” is a pull factor, drawing them to countries like South Africa where pastures appear greener.
But an underlying concern is that not enough is being done in the SADC region to address the overwhelming problems of diseases, such as HIV/Aids, as well as the systemic poverty and unemployment that forces children to migrate to other countries to survive.
”The reason children are migrating is to survive,” says Lucy Hillier of Save the Children UK and author of the report.
”What this is really saying is that SADC as a developing community still needs to do more to address poverty and disease … and more needs to be done to address the factors that are pushing people to other [more prosperous] countries. Southern Africa still has a lot of issues with which to deal.”
The report delves into the terrible circumstances in which the children find themselves after crossing the border, more often than not through ”irregular means”. Many girls are known to offer sex to guards in exchange for passage across the border, while boys literally swim across rivers and jump fences to get across. Many girls, the report notes, end up as commercial sex workers, although this is not part of their initial plan in crossing into another country.
The children are particularly vulnerable to magumaguma (scavengers) — men who take money ”in return for guiding people though a hole in the fence or by other routes,” says the report. ”The magumaguma not only extort large sums for this service, but they often steal the children’s clothes and belongings and might physically assault them.”
Children also face mareyane — violent gangs of men on the Mozambican border who prey on border jumpers, stealing their money and assaulting them.
While children face myriad dangers, when they finally reach their destination, they are forced to eke out a living working in the informal sector, as farm labourers or begging on the streets, says the report.
It notes that in South Africa the ”authorities, departments and civil society are unable to provide an adequate level of care and assistance to these children, because of a lack of clarity about laws and procedures … This is compounded by xenophobia and lack of commitment, capacity and resources.”
But, says Hillier, while capacity problems are understandably an issue, the lack of understanding and commitment in assisting these children by authorities such as the police and some social workers is of greater concern. The new Children’s Act safeguards the rights of all children living in South Africa, regardless of whether they are foreign or not, she says.
”It is a moral and legal obligation. These are children,” Hillier says.
A chief concern the report raises is that the concept of an unaccompanied migrant child is not well integrated into policy or planning in the Southern African region. Often the concerns of and for these children are eclipsed by the needs of trafficked children.
A focus on trafficked children does not recognise ”the increasingly high numbers of children who are migrating across borders for reasons other than being trafficked … or to stay in a host country for reasons that are not coercive,” says the report.
The Reginald Osmond centre in Martindale, Eastern Cape runs a programme that provides psychosocial support for immigrant children.
Johanna Kistner is a director at the centre. She says migrant children come to the centre every second week. The centre provides children with stationery and encourages them to become involved in art. She says it’s not about the end product, but the therapeutic nature of the process. ”We use art as a therapeutic medium.”
She says art helps the children to open up about the trauma they might have experienced. Kistner says when the children draw it helps them ”find memories and give them words”. She says that after the pictures are drawn, others in the programme ask questions about the picture.
”In this way the child is not alone in his or her terror. The terror is shared with the other children.” She says an artwork depicting people walking through a forest might elicit responses like ”you are brave, walking for 40km in the forest”. In this way the child begins to see himself or herself less as a victim and more as a hero. She calls this narrative therapy. ”We hope this will make them masters of their fate,” she says
Kistner says that when funds allow they hope to start working with migrant adults who lead harsh lives. ”Migrants live in such rough circumstances that psychosocial support is not at the top of their priorities.”
She says one of the difficulties is that the children don’t stay for long in one place. This means they can’t build networks with children who move around and it has a destabilising effect on the children.
