Something terribly wrong in the fabric of society

Residents go on a rampage believing they have been murdered by a foreign national. Still, it’s another statistic. A few months later a seven-month-old baby is found dead alone in a shack, with a foot missing, eaten by rats somewhere in South Africa. The mother had left her alone overnight and her boyfriend is a suspect in her death. A mother poisons herself and her sons, she dies and so do two of her three sons.

The sad story of South African children is one of the worst the world over, outside a war zone. They are the most vulnerable members of society, with some killed by their own parents and people meant to protect them. There has not been a truer statement on a society’s reflection of itself than the one by Nelson Mandela; “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” And our societies’ souls have been proven to dark and murky through the way children are treated.

South Africa is a busy country, with so many issues making the headlines and violent crimes; particularly murders and rape never fail to make a headline every other day. No matter how frequent such headlines have become, one can never get used to such headlines. So one day I decided I would listen to as much radio as I could, which was mainly open line programmes – where people can call in and comment on the hot topics of the day. I wanted to do some research and the results disturbed me.

On the day that I decided to do this research, I wanted to find out what exactly psyches people up, what gets them talking. The big headlines for the day had been a report on president Jacob Zuma’s spending on his Nkandla homestead due to be released by the country’s Public Protector. Another big story was the incorrect billing by of e-tolls by the South African National Road Agency. There was also a report on the death of the nine-year old who had been raped and set alight and finally, succumbed to her wounds.

On a full hour open line programme, no single caller commented on the story of the nine-year old who had succumbed to her burn wounds. The phone in programme was dominated by the first two stories and other unrelated stories. Caller after caller made their opinions heard on the Nkandla report. No one said anything about the nine-year girl, lying in a mortuary. Now get me correct, I am by no means saying the Nkandla report is not newsworthy but I find it absurd that the murder of a child means so little in the bigger scheme of things. Could it be that, the murder of children in the South Africa has become so frequent that reports no longer stir any emotional response in people? Could it be that we are grateful that it is not our immediate communities being affected?

A recent bulletin by the World Health Organisation reported that the rate of child homicide in the South Africa is more than double the global average. Over a third, 35.5% of children are killed by an acquaintance and nearly 30% by their mothers.

The South African Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana summarised it all during a service for one of the murdered children; “We’ve seen children being abused, poisoned, neglected, murdered, raped, trafficked, and used for pornography. Something, somewhere has gone wrong in the fabric of society.”