While some believe there is progress and a a difference in how the law responds to and deals with the spate of child abductions in the country, others feel not enough is being done.
This as the country recorded no less than 16 000 kidnappings of women and children per year, according to Statistics SA. The reasons for the kidnappings include ransom, human trafficking, drugs and family feuds.
In March this year, Missing Children SA received requests for help to find more than 1 300 missing children, in a country already ranking high among those with kidnapping cases.
Social worker Lester Lafatle, said: “More girls than boys go missing, and this is confirmed by the law; analysis show that human traffickers and the sex trade are mostly to blame.”
“There is a lesser recognised problem of child prostitute syndicates which operate in the cities but target children from rural areas,” she said.
Lafatle said authorities worldwide had started to crack down on such syndicates but South Africa lagged behind, mainly because “of a lack of evidence, and because prostitution is understood to be voluntary, and if prosecuted it is dealt with as such.”
She said there was little effort by law enforcement to find out why a person was on the street, as the reason was always thought to be personal, family or financial. Yet if you dug deeper, a lot of women and girls had horror stories of being forced into prostitution by organised crime syndicates.
“This we see when they manage to escape or when they need medical assistance and are encouraged to open up during treatment.”
Lafatle said last year she had worked with an NGO operating out of the Johannesburg CBD, which had brought a group of girls aged between 13 and 20, who had been rescued after a client picked one of them up.
“The girls - children really, were from far and wide, some from Mpumalanga and others the Free State....some had been on the street as homeless people, others said they were taken from their home towns on the pretext of being offered jobs only to be brought to Johannesburg, groomed, drugged and then peddled on the streets.”
Lefatle said stories like these read like fairytales, and when reported to the police the response was slow and unsatisfactory. “For some reason law enforcement rushes to rescue those who are evidently being kept captive, in circumstances where neighbours and others discover them. The little itty bitty ones who stand on the side of the road while a pimp looks on from a car parked across the street, are ignored and taken as street prostitutes, and that is where the failure of the system is.”
Law enforcement agencies and the police said there was a marked increase in cases of children being kidnapped and used for sex crimes.
“In the past year the SAPS Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit led investigations that ensured 23 000 accused are convicted and 19 000 arrested for gender based violence and femicide related crimes as well as crimes against children,” the SAPS said in May.
They said their Victim Empowerment Programme available at all police stations, assisted child victims of kidnappings and abductions reunite with their families.
But Lefatle noted: “Their work only touches the tip of the iceberg. This could be because child sex rings are run by influential people in some instances, rich people in others, and they pay off the men in blue to walk the street to turn a blind eye.”
She said no skimpily dressed child standing on the roadside should be ignored just because because it appears that they may be there by choice. “This is before we even talk of actual brothels, run by the infamous madams in communities, who lure young girls and boys with the promise of riches and a better life.”
“A bust every now and again is enough to put in a report, but if the SAPS and metro units kept at it constantly and worked with community members who always know about it, children would be saved from the horrific lives they would enter into as adults, bringing them nothing but sadness, pain, drugs and even suicide,” she said.
Sunday Independent
ntando.makhubu@inl.co.za