WHILE we still feel a little warm and fuzzy after witnessing the humbling floods of kindness on Mandela Day, it seems tragically ironic that other members of this same nation choose to violently tear away lives of innocent children Madiba so passionately stood to protect.
Brutality at the expense of defenceless young lives has reared its ugly head in both Zululand and other parts of our country.
This month, a kidnapped four-year-old’s body was found butchered in Pongola and another four-year-old boy died while being dragged 8.5km in Boksburg while hanging from his parents’ car at the hands of unscrupulous hijackers.
In eSikhaleni two weeks ago, a child was killed by his mother’s boyfriend to – as he so ‘eloquently’ put it – ‘to pay for her sins, following a domestic dispute.
And so there are a number of similar cases of senseless butchery recorded in Zululand in recent times.
Even a new-born’s life is deemed utterly worthless – or at least that is what you would think when KwaMbonambi community members discover a wailing four-day-old infant dumped in a pit latrine.
In a shocking revelation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Bulletin revealed that the rate of child homicide in South Africa is more than double the global average.
This is how humanity in this country measures up to the rest of the world.
But to give you an even better idea of the daily unadulterated carnage, the Director of the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town, Professor Shanaaz Mathews, declared three children are murdered a day.
Our nation’s moral fibre is in a shameful state of disrepair.
Proactive steps
Poverty and social inequality are often debated as the key drivers to violence against children (and crime in general, for that matter), but perhaps it is time to put the expiry date on our propensity to pinpoint and start taking proactive steps before the youth death toll escalates even further.
Our police should investigate murders and do their best to prepare fail-safe cases against violent offenders, but they cannot be expected to know exactly where and when a child’s life may be in danger.
Parents need to take measures to ensure their children’s safety at all costs – whether it be against volatile partners or vulnerability to crime when their kids are away from home.
Political leaders need to bolster child protection laws, policies and programmes while community activists should raise increased awareness of legal options for desperate, poverty-stricken pregnant mothers.
After all, a wise man once said: ‘There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children’ – Nelson Mandela.
