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Five days of national hearings on the Children’s Amendment Bill painted a bleak picture of the state of South Africa’s vulnerable children and the government’s role in the crisis. The bill provides the long-awaited solution to foster care, but if it’s also intended to protect children a.
Note: Names of children have been changed throughout to protect their identities.
The year 2020 was hard for Nosipho. A bright and sweet-natured 11-year-old at a quintile 1 school, she describes how she started the year excited for Grade 5. But then lockdown began. Her mother, a domestic worker, lost her piece job and the school stopped providing the regular meal Nosipho relied on to get through each day. Her mother used all of her savings to ensure they had bread, sacrificing her own meal so Nosipho could have enough. But by May they were both starving.
Their only source of food became a soup kitchen, run by residents determined to continue despite attempts by the Department of Social Development to shut it down. Every day Nosipho queued with her lunchbox, hoping for a hot meal. But although the children always ate first, the locals often ran out of food before they had fed all the hungry people, who sometimes waited for hours in the rain and cold for their only meal of the day.