The outcome of the ANCs long-awaited KwaZulu-Natal conference was a win for the Thuma Mina crowd. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Few cases of child trafficking and exploitation ever reach the courts, despite the establishment of a human trafficking forum consisting of the police, governmental departments and civil society groups.
This failure is largely a result of poor co-ordination between the government, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and other interest groups, and because it is difficult to keep track of witnesses, according to Dr Shaheda Omar, the director of clinical services at the Teddy Bear Clinic in Johannesburg.
She said the forum had been hampered by a lack of follow-through. “Different organisations are also working in silos.”
When the exploitation of children was reported, and in the rare cases when it reached the courts, witnesses regularly fled, she said.
Often, when sex was involved, pimps got word of impending prosecutions and even witnesses who were given protection disappeared overnight.
“These crimes are not regularly reported to the police unless somebody suspects that something is going on. The child is already trapped in an exploitative situation and is not going to report the abuse.”
Omar gave the example of a case reported to the forum in which children were being used as labourers at a horse-racing course. “And, when an investigation was conducted, these children just disappeared,” she said.
Omar believes child exploitation is prevalent, particularly as the number of refugees entering South Africa increases yearly. Their offspring often end up as street children, child labourers or sex workers “because it’s about survival”.
Reliable data on the number of children being exploited is hard to come by because perceptions about what constitutes child labour, or even sexual exploitation, differ, despite both being prohibited by the Children’s Amendment Act.
This view is supported by research in 2011 by the NGO Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, which examined perceptions about child protection service providers in Cape Town. It showed there was a limited understanding of what sexual exploitation is and, because of social workers’ gender bias, the sexual exploitation of boys was ignored.
The most recent statistics from the 2011 census date estimate that about 2.7-million children between the ages of seven and 17 were involved in some kind of economic activity. Of these, 41.7% were exposed to at least one hazardous condition.
The extent of human trafficking in general is contested. The Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand asked in a report released in May whether reports of trafficking are not being exaggerated. They listed as an example the fact that the government did not find a single case of people being trafficked during the 2010 World Cup, despite concerns that 40 000 women and 100 000 children would be trafficked into South Africa as sex workers.
The government and its alliance partners remain concerned about the exploitation of children. Trade union federation Cosatu will discuss child labour at its special national congress on July 13 and 14, according to Norman Mampane, the acting Cosatu spokesperson.
He said the unions had identified “pockets” of child labour, particularly on farms and in factories.
“The weakness about the system in the farms is that the majority of the child workers are used after school, and are paid in kind. For example, they may be paid in mealie meal or their parents will be promised accommodation in exchange for their labour,” he said.
In June, Minister for Social Development Bathabile Dlamini urged people to be vigilant about the possibility of child exploitation in their areas, particularly in those close to the borders with other countries.
She encouraged teachers, parents, caregivers and those working with children to put in place prevention and early intervention programmes to assist those who are being exploited or abused.