Caring for South Africa's Children: Addressing Child Neglect and Abuse

CHILD Protection Week has just been concluded, but year after year we are still stuck in the same momentum. Recently a 3-year-old was left unattended for hours on end resulting in his death and the girl child is no longer safe in South African schools.

Despite many adults being educated and aware of how to care for and nurture South Africa’s children, they still opt to inflict harm upon them.

In some instances, the harm is caused by practices that can be classified as child neglect, malnutrition, and maltreatment, and in other instances, children are victims of sexual misconduct, verbal and physical violence as well as psychological abuse such as bullying.

The challenges that children face are dire and this is further exacerbated by socio-economic circumstances such as poverty and illiteracy amidst adults, especially in rural communities.

South Africans need to become fully aware of the impact of their behaviour on children but more importantly, there needs to be a mindset shift that supports the development of better parenting and caregiving.

Unfortunately, the origins of child-headed households and community-based caregiving and parenting approaches are deeply rooted within the Apartheid era, poverty, patriarchy, and the global health pandemics such as HIV and COVID.

The concept of the live-in-domestic worker and male blue-collar workers who joined the mining industry and agricultural industry kept these adults away from their children.

Often, these children were left to run households by themselves and ‘hold the fort’ till their parents returned from work on the weekends.

In other instances, children were orphaned through the pandemics and were then raised by extended family members or grandparents in the rural spaces of whom many were illiterate.

These circumstances have contributed to the existing prevalence of malnutrition among South African children which spans over 3 decades.

These children are adults today and have a different perspective on what good parenting entails and how to identify child neglect and maltreatment.

Their perspective is often closely associated with their childhood experiences, trauma, and pleasant memories.

Understanding and comprehending how to identify child neglect is a huge concern that should have been brought to the fore in multiple approaches.

South Africans should be acutely aware of what is meant by child neglect and child abuse and how adult behaviour can contribute to child neglect and child abuse.

David Gil (1970) explains that child neglect and child abuse is a social problem and in his academic breakdown of the term he indicates that a child is neglected when there is limited access to basic resources such as housing, food, and poverty and when children are placed in unsafe communities and surroundings.

This has been the case at many government schools in South Africa where schools are yet to reconstruct and refurbish dilapidated buildings and school resources.

Communities have deemed these places unsafe and journalists have also reported that it is these empty unused quiet spaces that become the playground for gender-based violence and other variations of sexual assault and abuse.

Some impoverished schools are yet to build separate bathroom facilities for boys and girls and in some instances, the doors of toilet cubicles malfunction. These spaces then become fertile grounds for sexual harassment.

Scholars, Finkelhor and Korbin (1988) discuss six dimensions that have been applied internationally to determine acts of child neglect, maltreatment, or abuse.

They are as follows; the act has to be intentional to be deemed as abuse or neglect; socially acceptable in the locale in which it has occurred;

The act has to be deemed abusive according to international definitions; enacted upon by an individual despite governmental, economic and religious actions that can be responsible for constituting child abuse and harm children rather than everyone in the society;

An act be committed against a child who is considered a person by that society. However, within the context of South Africa, we should define and understand child neglect, inclusive of our historical background and present-day lifestyle led by the majority of South Africans.

Unfortunately, we cannot simply ignore our past injustices and all its ills such as the perpetuation of patriarchy and violent approaches South Africans adopted to demonstrate and communicate their discontent with the lack of government initiatives and poor municipal services.

The meaning and descriptions of child neglect and child abuse should become widespread and South Africans need to become aware of how to identify child neglect.

Such an educational campaign can be effective if all stakeholders are involved together with mass media initiatives.  

The dominant way to change the way adults treat children is through educational campaigns that highlight both the immediate and long-term impact of child neglect and child abuse.

We cannot become a society that is responsible for high child mortality rates because of child abuse and neglect.                

*The opinions expressed in this article does not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.

DAILY NEWS