Bishop Paul Verryn from the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg told SW Radio Africa on Thursday that in most cases unaccompanied Zim children are taking the risk for the chance of receiving an education.
The church has been a safe haven to thousands of Zim exiles for a number of years, including many unaccompanied minors. Verryn explained that education back home is now out of reach for the majority of children but the option of schooling is possible in South Africa.
“It’s an amazing phenomenon that youngsters are risking the journey to get schooling in South Africa,” Verryn said. “It is indicative that there is definitely a serious problem in Zimbabwe.”
But he warned that seeking education in South Africa carried with it the risk of falling victim to human trafficking and crime. Verryn was responding to reports that 21 Zimbabwean children were sent back home this week, after they were allegedly ‘smuggled’ across the border by a Bulawayo man.
The man was arrested on the South African side of the border on Wednesday, while he was loading the children into his car. He claims that he was taking them to their parents in Johannesburg, but this has not yet been verified. He now faces human trafficking charges, along with seven other men.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has recently raised concern that the current economic and employment situation in Zimbabwe has left young women, men and children vulnerable to human traffickers, who offer money or better lives. IOM research has found that internal trafficking of young women and children, for commercial sexual exploitation, is now a growing problem especially from rural to urban areas.
The IOM’s concerns came on the back of the release of a US report on global trafficking, which identified Zimbabwe as a “source, transit and destination” country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation in the region. The report said the unity government has “demonstrated minimal efforts to prevent trafficking.”
Verryn said that everyone “must keep very vigilant, as children on their own fall victim all the time and they are very vulnerable in South Africa.”
Lawyers for Human Rights meanwhile last month urged the South African authorities to protect the thousands of Zimbabwean children still entering the country. Immigration lawyer Samantha Mundeta said the current asylum system in South Africa does not offer any protection to children, and instead renders them more vulnerable.
“Foreign unaccompanied children are a voiceless, disenfranchised group who need greater intervention from civil society actors and policy makers in order for their plight to be adequately addressed by government officials who should assume this responsibility for these children,” she said.
Post published in: News