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.
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