Children’s charities in South Africa are warning of increased police clamp-downs on street children and child sex tourism during the World Cup. Are these scare tactics or reality?
(If large chunks of text make you queasy, then see this story in pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14615402@N08/sets/72157624768024908/ or listen to it: http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20100608-police-clamp-down-street-kids-ahead-world-cup)
The FIFA World Cup in South Africa promises to be one of those moments in world history. No African country has ever been given the chance to showcase itself in this way before. It is often children that have the most vivid memories of such a momentous event. But a number of charities in South Africa have expressed their concern for the safety of children during the month-long event which coincides with a school holiday. In a country where childcare is a luxury and crime involving minors is commonplace, the World Cup may prove to be an unhappy memory for many South African children.
The most vulnerable groups are homeless children according to certain charities. When Nelson Mandela opened parliament for his first time in 1994 and the world was watching, street children were rounded up and put into cells. Fifteen years later during the World Cup draw in Cape Town street children were targeted again by the police according to Sifiso Lezile, director and founder of MyLife, a children’s charity. He remembers like it was yesterday being taken to a police station when there was an opening of parliament in Cape Town, “I just wanted to be a part of the action. It was exciting you know. But everywhere we went there were police hunting us down....The same thing happened last December to the boys we look after at our day centre.”
Suffer together
Renovations are underway at Cape Town’s main train station. It’s facade is being given a face lift in time for the World Cup. But just a few metres from where the industrial building equipment strips away the 1970s exterior, William and Atim, two street children lie fast asleep in the mid-morning sun. Their bed is the roof of the train station which doubles up as an outdoor market frequented by blacks and coloureds only..
William and Atim have been friends for a couple of years. They sleep together, beg together, catch fish together and suffer together. Everyday is a battle to survive, their biggest threat is anyone who is older than them:
“The older boys come and take our money. They need it to buy drugs mostly, or they just take it anyway,” explains William who at 13 decided to run away from his father who lives in Springbok, an area where mines closedown almost every month. The father had been unemployed and violent for years.
Both boys are still nursing bruises they say were sustained at the hands of army personnel. Across from the train station is one of Cape Town’s oldest landmarks, a fortress. It is surrounded by water which is home to carpe. William and Atim go there to catch the fish which they then eat and sell. They are chased away by soldiers if there are a lot of tourists around. According to William and Atim, the soldiers got so tired of them that they were dragged into the barracks and beaten up. Going to the police was not an option because “they are just as bad.”
For William and Atim the World Cup means very little. In fact they expect it will be even harder for them to earn money because the police will chase them away:
“We’ve been told that there is going to be a camp in Milnerton [10 kilometres outside Cape Town] that we will be taken if we get caught begging. It’s called the Happy Village,” says William. The South African Police Service repeated ignored requests to be interviewed about the existence of the inappropriately named Happy Village.
Red card
With beaches, mountains and nearby vineyards, Cape Town attracts by far the biggest number of tourists to South Africa. This is mostly good for William and Atim because tourists tend to be more generous. But there are some who have other intentions when offering money.
“A lot of people do come to me when I am at the traffic lights begging and ask: do I do blow jobs? You can earn some money. Then I say no...There are a lot of them. White people. Foreigners,” William explains.
Molo Songololo, a local organization specializing in children’s rights released a report last year about the dangers faced by vulnerable children during the World Cup. Their findings showed that sex tourism is likely to rise due to the influx of foreigners. “Expectations have been created around the World Cup. One of our finding is that some adults are likely to use children in order to make money, mostly through begging, but some will also pimp children,” warns Patric Solomons, director of Molo Songololo. “So we have been working extensively with children in deprived areas to alert them to the dangers of sex tourism. Thousands of children have been given a red card with a helpline number that they can call if they find themselves in danger.
Much of the efforts made by children’s charities to alert children to the dangers that are faced by children in South Africa have been financed by the private sector. Big corporations such as Nike and Coca Cola are sponsoring programmes for children during the World Cup. And charities are all hoping to get a piece of the pie. Which is perhaps why Linzi Thomas, manager of MyLife sees the World Cup as a potential catalyst: “What the authorities don’t see is that perhaps the world may actually try to help us if we show them the real picture. We are being approached all the time by the foreign media and charities, you name it, to show them the real South Africa. The government is in denial about the problems that face kids in this country, such as drugs, just as they were over AIDS during Thabo Mbeki’s time.”
Problems on display
The danger with showing the world such a candid picture of South Africa though is that money from the private sector tends to be given in one-off payments. Children evoke stronger emotions in the hearts of most, which the private sector is well aware of. A crop of community-based projects have sprouted up all over South Africa thanks to the World Cup. But questions remain over how sustainable many of these projects are in the long term. So children’s charities could unintentionally end up giving false expectations to the very people they are trying to help.
FIFA, under the leadership of Seph Blatter, is well aware of such pitfalls, and so has committed several million kroner to it’s Football for Hope campaign which aims to use football to empower children in the African context. Twelve centres have been allocated funding in 10 African countries for the next decade.
The Football for Hope centre in Cape Town was launched to coincide with the World Cup draw in December. While FIFA cannot hope to eradicate the problems of children like William and Atim, what it has tried to do is put the problems of South African children on the agenda. “More than fifty coaches, all of whom are young adults have been trained to go into schools in the townships and mentor children affected by HIV/AIDS,” beams Xolani Magqwaka site coordinator of the Football for Hope centre in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township.
Phumela, is one of the coaches at the Football for Hope centre. Her life story is not dissimilar to Atim’s, except that when her mother got too ill to care for Phumela, she was taken in by her grandmother rather than being left to roam the streets. Phumela’s mother has since died of AIDS. To have had such a sad life in her 21 years is not unusual among South Africa’s youth. But the happiest day of her life came last year, according to Phumela “when I was told I could be a coach. So now the young kids can come to me and tell me their troubles. They don’t have to be alone with us here.”
While the authorities may bulk at the thought of putting the countries poor communities and their problems on display during the World Cup, the private sector together with charities seem determined to present a more graphic picture of the rainbow nation. Whether children will be the winners or the losers in the battle for the world’s hearts, minds and money remains to be seen.
Friday, 20 August 2010
SAVING ZIMBABWE’S LOST GENERATION
Zimbabwe has teetered on the brink of becoming a fail state for the past decade due to the failed policies of President Robert Mugabe. I traveled from Bulawayo to Harare where I met people committed to saving a lost generation.
(If large chunks of text make you feel queasy, then check out this story in pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14615402@N08/sets/72157624767750176/ or in spoken word: http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20100713-bid-save-zimbabwes-lost-generation)
The Zanu PF Youth League has become notorious for brutally enforcing the policies of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s despotic president. Youths as young as 10 are recruited into the National Youth Service where they are clothed, fed and indoctrinated using government funds. During elections or when important legislation is about to be enacted, members of the Zanu PF Youth League have been ordered to inflict the worst kind of violence against men, women and children across the country. The unity government, set up last year between Zanu PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, has made very little difference to young people. Local NGOs say Youth militias still go on the rampage enforcing the political will of both parties.
The prospects for young people have become so bleak over the past decade that the UN’s International Organization for Migration estimates more than 40 percent of 20 to 35 year olds have left Zimbabwe. Those that remain are faced with high rates of HIV and AIDS and 90% unemployment. But still there is hope. The global recession jolted many people in the diaspora to at least consider returning to Zimbabwe. And home-grown non-governmental organizations are sprouting up to provide Zimbabwe’s youth with support and guidance. Upwards of three million Zimbabweans live in South Africa today. Events of the past two years which include deadly xenophobic attacks and a slow down in South Africa’s economy, has led Zimbabweans to consider returning home.
The University of Cape Town attracts the highest number of foreign students of any university in Africa. Germans rub shoulders with Jews from Israel, and Americans in search of an Africa on the safe side can be heard across the campus. But the largest group of foreign students are Zimbabweans.
”I think we are liked by the teaching staff because our level of education when we enter university is higher than many of the black South Africans,” says Anthony Chipazi, a Master’s student who has been at UCT for five years and now teaches first year students.
People born in Zimbabwe in the 1980s have benefited from a well-functioning education system. One that was overhauled after independence in 1980 to become more racially inclusive but also to reflect the needs and interests of black Zimbabweans. Fai Chung was deputy minister for education from 1980 until
1988 when she took over the ministry. But within five years she left government after a disagreement over policy. After a decade of working for Unicef in New York, she returned to head the NGO Envision. Fai Chung remains committed to the development of young Zimbabweans. In spite of the challenges they face, she refuses to see them as a lost generation:
“They are young people facing very serious problems, 90 percent unemployment, HIV-AIDS to name but a few. But worst is the lengths politicians will go to exploit their vulnerability...But in spite of it all, I refuse to see them as a lost generation.”
Old men
The reign of terror inflicted on poor communities across Zimbabwe by youth militias is not restricted to election times. When arch rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing deal that led to the formation of a unity government in February last year, they also agreed to write a new constitution within 18 months. The aim being to introduce democratic reforms.
But Tsvangirai's MDC now accuses Mugabe's ZANU-PF of not only attempting to sabotage the drafting of a new constitution in a bid to delay elections, but also of using violence to do so. But not everyone is intimidated. Arnold Chamunogwa leads the Youth Agenda Trust, a grassroots organization that is politically neutral. He says that he feels compelled to continue protesting against the old men in politics who are oppressing young people:
“What is still happening just recently is that whenever we hold a meeting for school-aged children to inform them about what the new constitution could mean for them, Zanu PF come and break it up, sometime violently. But we wont let those old men who control some misguided youths stop us. We are committed to trying to reclaim the future.”
Head-to-head clashes with political youth militias can be a very dangerous game. The Youth Agenda Trust claims to have lost several of its members over the past decade by doing just that. So what other methods are at the disposal of Zimbabweans committed to ensuring that young people in today’s Zimbabwe don’t become a lost generation? Fai Chung thinks that a return to traditional values can help remind people that killing in the name of politics is not acceptable:
“I think it is really a matter of getting the whole community clear about what is acceptable behaviour in the political arena and what is not. No religion I know of in Zimbabwe, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or traditional beliefs, none of the condone killing. So what we need to do in Zimbabwe is get back in touch with our youngsters back in touch with their traditional values.”
Empowering girls
Children, particularly girls, are the silent sufferers of political violence in Zimbabwe. More and more girls are being referred to the NGO, Girl Child Network, as a direct result of political violence as well as the knock on effects of political instability. When men don’t have jobs then girls are more likely to be taken out of school and in the worst cases be sexually abused. The organization aims to be apolitical so as to draw on the support of the entire community.
Girl Child Network has three empowerment villages in rural areas for girls who have been abused and cannot return to their families in the short term. They’re all built on land donated by a local chief.
“Why we are here is because it is closer to the chief’s homestead, so we receive the protection afforded to him when there is political unrest in the country. But also our founder thought that it was best that we get the full backing of the chief so that our project doesn’t stand out too much in this very rural community. The girls here need to feel part of the community and understand their culture in order to feel loved and not rejected,” explains Nyasha Mazango the director of Girl Child Network who returned to Zimbabwe at the height of the troubles four years ago, after completing her Masters in Development Studies at the University of Oslo.
Local Chief Nguwa’s support of the Girl Child Network is imperative for the survival and protection of the seven little girls and one boy who live in the empowerment village, and the thousands of others who live in the 100 villages that come under his jurisdiction. As a man in his 70s who has lived through all manner of political upheavals he is still upbeat about the fate of Zimbabwean youths:
“The young generation of Zimbabwe must return soon before they forget their culture. It is understandable that they want to go outside (the country) and learn more, but soon they must return to show us other people’s ways,” says Chief Nguwa.
With more than 40 percent of 20 to 35 year olds living outside the country and those who remain facing continued turmoil and political division, Chief Nguwa’s plea for togetherness may be too late. Of the tens of Zimbabwean students at the University of Cape Town when asked when they would return to Zimbabwe only one said “straight after my studies.”
So for now Zimbabwe looks set to remain a place of limited possibilities for young people prospering in the diaspora. While young people left in Zimbabwe or returning after years away are faced with the perils of building constructive political unity. But for the immediate future their freedoms and opportunities will continue to be curtailed by a stubborn octogenarian, who seems intent on making them Zimbabwe’s lost generation.
(If large chunks of text make you feel queasy, then check out this story in pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14615402@N08/sets/72157624767750176/ or in spoken word: http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20100713-bid-save-zimbabwes-lost-generation)
The Zanu PF Youth League has become notorious for brutally enforcing the policies of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s despotic president. Youths as young as 10 are recruited into the National Youth Service where they are clothed, fed and indoctrinated using government funds. During elections or when important legislation is about to be enacted, members of the Zanu PF Youth League have been ordered to inflict the worst kind of violence against men, women and children across the country. The unity government, set up last year between Zanu PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, has made very little difference to young people. Local NGOs say Youth militias still go on the rampage enforcing the political will of both parties.
The prospects for young people have become so bleak over the past decade that the UN’s International Organization for Migration estimates more than 40 percent of 20 to 35 year olds have left Zimbabwe. Those that remain are faced with high rates of HIV and AIDS and 90% unemployment. But still there is hope. The global recession jolted many people in the diaspora to at least consider returning to Zimbabwe. And home-grown non-governmental organizations are sprouting up to provide Zimbabwe’s youth with support and guidance. Upwards of three million Zimbabweans live in South Africa today. Events of the past two years which include deadly xenophobic attacks and a slow down in South Africa’s economy, has led Zimbabweans to consider returning home.
The University of Cape Town attracts the highest number of foreign students of any university in Africa. Germans rub shoulders with Jews from Israel, and Americans in search of an Africa on the safe side can be heard across the campus. But the largest group of foreign students are Zimbabweans.
”I think we are liked by the teaching staff because our level of education when we enter university is higher than many of the black South Africans,” says Anthony Chipazi, a Master’s student who has been at UCT for five years and now teaches first year students.
People born in Zimbabwe in the 1980s have benefited from a well-functioning education system. One that was overhauled after independence in 1980 to become more racially inclusive but also to reflect the needs and interests of black Zimbabweans. Fai Chung was deputy minister for education from 1980 until
1988 when she took over the ministry. But within five years she left government after a disagreement over policy. After a decade of working for Unicef in New York, she returned to head the NGO Envision. Fai Chung remains committed to the development of young Zimbabweans. In spite of the challenges they face, she refuses to see them as a lost generation:
“They are young people facing very serious problems, 90 percent unemployment, HIV-AIDS to name but a few. But worst is the lengths politicians will go to exploit their vulnerability...But in spite of it all, I refuse to see them as a lost generation.”
Old men
The reign of terror inflicted on poor communities across Zimbabwe by youth militias is not restricted to election times. When arch rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing deal that led to the formation of a unity government in February last year, they also agreed to write a new constitution within 18 months. The aim being to introduce democratic reforms.
But Tsvangirai's MDC now accuses Mugabe's ZANU-PF of not only attempting to sabotage the drafting of a new constitution in a bid to delay elections, but also of using violence to do so. But not everyone is intimidated. Arnold Chamunogwa leads the Youth Agenda Trust, a grassroots organization that is politically neutral. He says that he feels compelled to continue protesting against the old men in politics who are oppressing young people:
“What is still happening just recently is that whenever we hold a meeting for school-aged children to inform them about what the new constitution could mean for them, Zanu PF come and break it up, sometime violently. But we wont let those old men who control some misguided youths stop us. We are committed to trying to reclaim the future.”
Head-to-head clashes with political youth militias can be a very dangerous game. The Youth Agenda Trust claims to have lost several of its members over the past decade by doing just that. So what other methods are at the disposal of Zimbabweans committed to ensuring that young people in today’s Zimbabwe don’t become a lost generation? Fai Chung thinks that a return to traditional values can help remind people that killing in the name of politics is not acceptable:
“I think it is really a matter of getting the whole community clear about what is acceptable behaviour in the political arena and what is not. No religion I know of in Zimbabwe, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or traditional beliefs, none of the condone killing. So what we need to do in Zimbabwe is get back in touch with our youngsters back in touch with their traditional values.”
Empowering girls
Children, particularly girls, are the silent sufferers of political violence in Zimbabwe. More and more girls are being referred to the NGO, Girl Child Network, as a direct result of political violence as well as the knock on effects of political instability. When men don’t have jobs then girls are more likely to be taken out of school and in the worst cases be sexually abused. The organization aims to be apolitical so as to draw on the support of the entire community.
Girl Child Network has three empowerment villages in rural areas for girls who have been abused and cannot return to their families in the short term. They’re all built on land donated by a local chief.
“Why we are here is because it is closer to the chief’s homestead, so we receive the protection afforded to him when there is political unrest in the country. But also our founder thought that it was best that we get the full backing of the chief so that our project doesn’t stand out too much in this very rural community. The girls here need to feel part of the community and understand their culture in order to feel loved and not rejected,” explains Nyasha Mazango the director of Girl Child Network who returned to Zimbabwe at the height of the troubles four years ago, after completing her Masters in Development Studies at the University of Oslo.
Local Chief Nguwa’s support of the Girl Child Network is imperative for the survival and protection of the seven little girls and one boy who live in the empowerment village, and the thousands of others who live in the 100 villages that come under his jurisdiction. As a man in his 70s who has lived through all manner of political upheavals he is still upbeat about the fate of Zimbabwean youths:
“The young generation of Zimbabwe must return soon before they forget their culture. It is understandable that they want to go outside (the country) and learn more, but soon they must return to show us other people’s ways,” says Chief Nguwa.
With more than 40 percent of 20 to 35 year olds living outside the country and those who remain facing continued turmoil and political division, Chief Nguwa’s plea for togetherness may be too late. Of the tens of Zimbabwean students at the University of Cape Town when asked when they would return to Zimbabwe only one said “straight after my studies.”
So for now Zimbabwe looks set to remain a place of limited possibilities for young people prospering in the diaspora. While young people left in Zimbabwe or returning after years away are faced with the perils of building constructive political unity. But for the immediate future their freedoms and opportunities will continue to be curtailed by a stubborn octogenarian, who seems intent on making them Zimbabwe’s lost generation.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)