Sexting, shared nudes and sextortion are part of a worrying trend among many South African and overseas kids and teens, despite big tech’s promises that it’s taking steps to...
Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights
Like sweeping leaves in a cyclone, Child Protection Week echoes with empty promises
It’s the end of another Child Protection Week, proof positive of a government without a cohesive funded strategy for child protection, or anything related to children, and one...
The Children’s Amendment Bill: Needs and rights of the vulnerable trumped by political expediency
After four years of debate and consultation around the Children’s Amendment Bill, it took only half an hour for the Social Development Portfolio Committee to decide on...
Is the Children’s Amendment Bill about child protection, cost cutting or control?
Five days of national hearings on the Children’s Amendment Bill painted a bleak picture of the state of South Africa’s vulnerable children and the government’s role in the...
The State of the Nation for South Africa’s children
On the eve of the State of the Nation Address, South Africa’s child advocates are asking if this will be the year children’s rights are prioritised. But they fear children will...
What to expect from the controversial Children’s Amendment Bill
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster and Paula Proudlock Two years after the Children’s Amendment Bill was first gazetted for public comment, it has finally been tabled in Parliament. The...
The horror of child hunger stalks our land
SA’s plans to combat child hunger were flawed prior to the Covid-19 crisis. And now, the absence of a strategic plan and funds for food relief could push already vulnerable...
Adoptions: Proposed new law could do irreparable harm to SA’s most vulnerable
November was World Adoption Month. It was also the first anniversary of the gazetting of the Children’s Amendment Bill which may end adoptions in SA. What started as a debate...
A government committed to Early Childhood Development would not pass the Children’s Amendment Bill
Early Childhood Development is one of the government’s flagship projects in the war against poverty. But optimising ECD involves a delicate balance between enabling it through...
Process errors in bill could expose children to more harm
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Regressive and deeply flawed, the Children’s Amendment Bill is rushed to the new Parliament
One of the first tasks of South Africa’s Sixth Parliament will be to determine the fate of the Children’s Amendment Bill. Despite content and process errors that could expose...
Access to adoptions will decline if Children’s Act amendments are passed
As 2018 drew to a close, the war of attrition over South African adoption took an ugly turn. In an unambiguous act of aggression, the government added a last-minute amendment to...
Another Minister arrives, another May passes – and still no social welfare subsidies
Another May, a different minister, but once again the Department of Social Development has missed its deadline for negotiating the Service Level Agreements required to maintain...
The child care funding crisis: Is there life after subsidies?
For tens of thousands of children abandoned annually in South Africa, or aborted illegally in the third trimester and left for dead, surviving is only the first battle....
Dirty tricks, delays and deception: The sabotage of child protection
In May 2016, the Department of Social Development called an immediate halt to adoptions in KwaZulu-Natal over alleged child trafficking. A year later, and despite an ugly witch...
Into Thin Air: Thousands of SA’s most vulnerable at risk as NGOs’ subsidies subside
At the end of April, thousands of NGOs across South Africa failed to receive their government subsidies. As winter sets in, these custodians of the country’s most vulnerable,...
Social Development: Going to hell in a hand basket?
Over the course of the Social Grants crisis, the Minister of Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini was accused of incompetence, ulterior motives and most famously of showing...
Fearing the foreigner: When child protection and institutionalised xenophobia collide
Adoption, like all child protection initiatives, is predicated on the principle of “the best interests of the child”. Except when it isn’t. In some significant matters,...
Children’s Amendment Bills: Ubuntu and the ongoing child protection debate
The public hearings held by the government portfolio committee tasked with assessing the Children’s Amendment Bills were a stark reminder that many sectors of government still...
Lies, damned lies and statistics: Unravelling South Africa’s child trafficking conundrum
In modern society there are few things as truly evil as human trafficking, especially when it involves children, and Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba’s argument for those...
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