Zama zamas expose SA’s struggle with child protection

There is a list circulating of names, nationalities and dates of births of alleged illegal miners who perished at the Stilfontein mine in the North West.

The birth dates leave one cold.

Many of us screamed that they ought to be “smoked out” for involvement in criminal activities that have deepened SA’s problems.

We were irked by the non-profit organisations that sought to provide humanitarian relief.

Now, a list of names comes in and it’s apparent that many of these “terrorists to the SA economy” are children, literally, who mostly find themselves in a foreign country in the belly of the mines.

What has the world come to when children as young as 18 are either thrown to the wolves because of their effort to fend for themselves and their families, or when the same children opt for a life of crime for the same reasons.

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We remain unsure if the miners were forced to go underground or if they consented.

For the answer we have to rely on the investigation, but we must not forget that some of the police members assigned to the case, either as leads or supports, have allowed the kingpins to evade justice.

Foreign or not, the child is not protected in South Africa. We must concede that if they had not been children of foreign descent, South African children could have been the victims of these crimes of poverty.

We have seen it play out in the ganglands of the Western Cape, where children have lost years of their childhoods and youth and have opted to carry arms as lookouts and runners for gangs at war.

They risk their lives because the alternative is a life of nothingness.

Poverty is their only reality. Mothers are absent in some homes and in others, fathers are often either absent or toxic.

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The response to this is to find a family in gangs that provide economically.

Children are forced into making choices that are beyond their reasoning capacity.

There is an urgent need to protect children in South Africa.

While many initiatives seek to protect girls, boys have been sent to the front lines unprotected.

We ought to learn from the Stilfontein saga that it is our children, and those of our neighbours, that require us to be their shield.

While we may be enraged by the acts of children who enter criminal syndicates, we must understand that it spreads and even the most protected children could be at risk.

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