Child Commissioner Urged to Focus on Tackling Hunger, Bullying and Sexual Predation

GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, Unite for Change Leadership Council Member and GOOD Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament:

I wrote to the new Western Cape Commissioner for Children today to congratulate her on her appointment, from the beginning of last month, and offered to assist her in developing an action plan focusing on three areas of crisis for children.

A very high proportion of children in our province grow up and develop at the mercy of extreme socio-economic and environmental dysfunction. The conditions that give rise to gangsterism, alcoholism, drug abuse, violence and misogyny require a whole-of-government response beyond the realm of a Commissioner for Children or any single department.

On the basis that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, I proposed to the Commissioner that she develop a five-year strategy with a three-part focus:

• Hunger and food insecurity;
• Bullying (especially at schools, as we saw recently at Milnerton High School), and
• Sexual predation at schools perpetrated by young boys and even educators.

The bullying incident at Milnerton High School last month, racialised and perhaps even institutionalised as some form of initiation ritual, underscores the issues we have raised with Ms Roberts in our correspondence. The incident, in our view, should prompt not only direct intervention by the Commissioner but also the development of a province-wide anti-bullying programme of action.

Similarly, children, especially young girls, who experience sexualised predatory conduct by male co-learners – and educators in some cases – must know that the Commissioner’s office is championing a school culture where they can feel safe from sexual harassment and assault.

Child hunger, and more broadly, family hunger, cannot be addressed through ad hoc interventions by charitable neighbours or NGOs who run unsponsored feeding schemes. Food and water are the most basic human needs, and it is the state’s constitutional mandate to provide a food programme that does not rely on scattered, intermittent, ad-hoc access to food.

The Commissioner was urged to engage with the extent of child hunger and to champion an institutionalised, effective and reliable state response.

The Western Cape’s Constitution created a unique independent champion for the rights and protection of our children. At a time of heightened community violence, especially in gang-ravaged communities where children are dying in the crossfire or being recruited into gangs, this office is more important than ever.

We urge the Child Commissioner to flex her muscles so that the office meaningfully addresses the most urgent human rights violations being experienced by children in this province.

As she prepares to implement a five-year strategy for the Office of the Western Cape Commissioner for Children, we urge her to position her office as an intervenor for vulnerable children, a champion who listens to what children say and acts on their behalf.

GOOD Ministerial Role: Patricia de Lille serves as the Minister of Tourism in the national government.

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