Chairperson, Members of Parliament, comrades, ladies and gentlemen and our guests in the gallery, please allow me to begin on an optimistic note, even amidst the horrendously violent attacks on and the abuse and murder of our children and youth that we have seen particularly over the past weeks in South Africa. Chairperson, it is a fact that since 1994 the ANC-led government has done, and is still doing, everything in its power to protect its children and young people, giving them priority and putting them at the heart of all our national policies.
Indeed, South Africa is one of the few countries in our continent that has aggressively pursued the idea of citizenship as including children and the youth. The newly formed Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities is one important structure that this government mandates to formally articulate and recognise the aspirations, needs and conditions of our children and youth in South Africa.
Today, in this House, we find ourselves debating, discussing and reminding our people, our communities and our entire nation that a society that does not care about the wellbeing of its children is a society without a future. These are the wise words of a novelist from Cameroon, Calixthe Beyala, and they are words that we as a nation need to quickly find resonance with, lest we plunge our future into ultimate doom.
If we take note of just the three young victims who were killed on 7, 11 and 12 October respectively, we will realise that they are all confirmed as being under the age of 9. And if we care to probe further into the nature of their murders, we will find three startling facts. The first fact is that family members, relatives, parents or mothers account for most cases of horrific child abuse. On 12 October 2011, a mother disposed of her newborn baby in a dam. Secondly, the abuser is often someone whom the child is familiar with and trusts. In this instance, the abuser uses the child's vulnerability and affection to his advantage. On 7 October 2011, Athenkosi Nkone, a four-year- old, was called into the perpetrator's shack for sweets. The perpetrator slit the child's throat and put the child's body in a suitcase.
The third fact is that child molesters silence their young victims as ruthlessly as they can. On 11 October 2011, Zikhona Qhayi, an 8-year-old, was strangled after being sexually assaulted. This brutal perpetrator sexually harmed and then killed Zikhona to silence her forever and prevent her from telling anyone about the molestation.
Here we are in this House today, asking ourselves, asking the whole nation, what prompted these monster child molesters and killers to steal the blessing of innocence and replace that innocence with unimaginable fear, hurt and permanent damage to the young bodies of these children. Some will immediately reply that all gender-based violence derives from or is caused by gender inequalities in a patriarchal society. Some of us will surely go further and say that socioeconomic hardship is the cause of the social ills and evils we see today.
When we start asking what the first line of defence against child abuse and murder is, some of us here will say that people must bring an abused child to the attention of the appropriate authorities. Some will say the police must do their job and apprehend these monsters who are child molesters and killers. But, at best, all of the above may contribute in preventing an abused child from suffering further harm. All in all, it is what I call a late intervention.
Colleagues, comrades, as the Ministry of Police and in my capacity as the Deputy Minister of Police, our message to this House today is that the greater good is to prevent child abuse before it occurs. Nothing beats proactive solutions and interventions.
What do I mean by proactive interventions? First, all primary professionals such as police officers, teachers, nurses and day-care workers who regularly come into contact with children must be adequately trained in child abuse recognition and prevention.
Secondly, centres such as the Thuthuzela centres and the SA Police Service, SAPS, Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit must be utilised maximally to assist and prepare communities and families for the job of nonabusive child rearing. These facilities must be used to equip parents with adequate knowledge and parenting skills. So far, since last year November, we have re-established these units in all nine provinces. We have just started with the recruitment of people with special skills to get, for example, more social workers and psychologists into our system and we are equipping our police officers with the investigative skills that we think they are still lacking.
Thirdly, we have structures within the police such as the SAPS Women's Network and the SAPS Men for Change. These must partner with other civil society structures to bolster a community that is supportive; a community that can provide children with the safe and nurturing environment they need to grow into healthy, self-sufficient adults.
Chairperson, colleagues and comrades, we must acknowledge one thing in this House. Yes, our respective capacities and responsibilities as Members of Parliament, Ministers and Deputy Ministers, and public servants such as nurses, teachers and police officers are very clear under the Constitution and related laws of the Republic. However, saving young lives from abuse surely must be more than the statutory protection of a child. Saving a young life is fundamentally about doing what is right and not what we are forced to do or what we are legally bound to do. We must always do what is right.
It is about stressing the need to revive our fundamental value that says: "My child is your child, and a child is raised by the whole village." What is right is a child being given the opportunity by his or her community and family to grow up healthy and safe. As such, the whole nation of South Africa has no greater responsibility than the protection of its children against all forms of violence and abuse. Central to this community obligation is the action-oriented government structures and programmes of education and advocacy that provide the necessary supportive resources for ensuring the safety of our children and restoring the dignity of those who survive the horrible ordeal of abuse and violence.
Innovative intergovernmental programmes such as the victim empowerment programme, referred to as the VEP, are such structures where survivors of child violence and abuse can receive immediate and long-term care and counselling. I must say today in this House that when it comes to such victim empowerment centres, Limpopo is doing a very good job.
This programme not only assists the police by providing a centralised facility where police investigators can meet with the victim and gather evidence, but these centres also bring together all relevant legal and medical agencies and departments into a single space. This provides better assistance to the victim and also facilitates criminal investigation. The right thing to happen in these VEP centres is for the people who have been delegated to help the survivors of these sex-related crimes to be motivated, compassionate, diligent and dedicated in their work.
We also urge that public servants should premise their motivation on the belief that the child survivor has the right to privacy, safety and human dignity. They must know that it is extremely difficult for a child to report sexual abuse. The child may not even understand that what has happened is not normal or acceptable. Hence we urge those people who work with children to be aware that they should always be alert to any opportunity to aid the child who attempts to disclose or report abuse. The child's need for support and protection must come first.
We know that many adults have a tendency to overlook, discount or disbelieve allegations of sexual abuse, especially when the perpetrator or molester is a family member or a law-abiding, seemingly respectable, nice and normal person. In such instances, we assume the child is lying. We must know that children rarely lie or invent stories on their own about being sexually abused. They rarely do that. A child cannot always come up with such a story.
Now and again we plead with our communities to work with the police to fight crime of all types, because it is a fact that police officers can never be on all street corners, in all schools, in all homes, nor in our bedrooms, to fight the scourge of child abuse. Last month I met with the commander of the SAPS Nyanga cluster and his detectives, who were investigating the case of a 21-year-old victim - Chief Whip - of this province. The victim's name is Nontsikelelo Tyatyeka and her decomposed body was found in a rubbish bin a year after she was murdered by a childhood friend simply because she was a lesbian.
I asked the lead detective who discovered the remains whether he received any counselling after discovering the almost skeletal body. To my horror, he said no. As police leadership, we have been urging police management to make sure that our police officers are well nurtured and their general wellness sustained at all times.
You can just imagine what it must have been like when they opened the dustbin. Because it is so hot in a dustbin, the bones were like isuphu ngaphakathi [soup inside], and the police officer is then expected to take out what is in that dustbin. Given all this, there is nothing that we, the leadership, are doing with regard to counselling to make sure that we prepare them before they go to such scenes.
Extreme exhaustion and shock can cause a police officer to suffer loss of sleep, heightened anxiety and a poor diet, resulting in an irritable, aggressive and short-tempered police officer. We complain that amapolisa aseNyanga awasihoyi, ayadineka sithi [Nyanga police do not attend to us; they are snappy towards us]; they are doing this and that, but the blame is with us as leadership. For them to be able to assist us, we need to look after their wellbeing. Through the SAPS wellness programmes, which will be rolled out in all cluster police stations, we will make sure that the wellness and needs of our police officers are fulfilled, so that our men and women in blue continue to do the sterling work of reducing all types of crime in our country.
In conclusion, as this ANC-led government continues to respond to the calls of our people for a more visible police force patrolling local areas and protecting them against crime in all its forms, we are also calling on communities, parents, community leaders and all professionals who work with children to assess community risks and protection factors. As government we say that every one of us has a role to play in helping our children and youth acquire quality life skills so that South Africa can one day be counted as one of the best places in the world for a child to enjoy his childhood and a young person to enjoy being a young person. [Applause.]