Sisulu wants child rapists chemically castrated

ANC presidential hopeful Lindiwe Sisulu has painted a bleak picture of widespread teenage pregnancies involving adults who sleep with children and has vowed to propose – at the ANC national conference – for the chemical castration of abusers.

Speaking during a webinar with journalists yesterday, the human settlements minister – who is also chair of the ANC’s subcommittee on social transformation – described the situation as “horrific”.

She quoted a recent report indicating SA has the highest rate of child pregnancies in the world.

Between 2021 and 2022, a total 90,000 teenage pregnancies were recorded.

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Most of those pregnancies involved relations between adult men and teenage girls and not between teenage boys and girls.

Children involved were between the ages of 10 and 19.

“We cannot have this kind of scourge on our children that are growing up in our society. It speaks to statutory rape,” Sisulu said.

She said while a proposal for chemical castration was rejected at the previous ANC national conference, she would still advocate for it to be adopted as policy at the next conference.

She believes this would assist in dealing with endemic abuse of women and children and widespread rape in the country.

She says the previous proposal was thrown out by a male-dominated ANC conference.

“Impregnating children and human trafficking are so contrary to the Freedom Charter. There is a need to protect our people from this,” Sisulu said.

She said there were clear signs of widespread inequality in SA and this must be fought at all angles.

The minister’s statement comes months after the World Bank report found SA was still the most unequal society in the world.

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The ANC proposed that when land was being allocated for housing by municipalities, the allocated plots must be advertised in the media so that the ownership of that land was known.

She conceded that despite efforts made, the ANC had not been able to arrest the massive housing backlog in the country.

Sisulu cautioned against reliance on the state for resources, saying people need to understand there were certain things they could do themselves.

The government only assists the indigent or the poorest in terms of grants, free basic water, social relief grants, free education and state subsidised housing.

The R350 monthly social relief grant for the unemployed has had the desired effect – to alleviate poverty and hunger during the pandemic.

But there is concern about many who applied for the grant since its inception but still had not received a cent.

There was an outcry when some did not receive the grant as they’re said to have income because of monies deposited into their account.

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