Something to start 2012 with ....

Let me pass this first blog of 2012 over to Lesego, one of our amazing Childline facilitators who has been training and reporting back on our 'Caring for Crèches' now for five years -

"Once again, the 2011 Crèche Teacher Training was conducted in different areas within the province and it went very well.  The trainings were conducted in areas which really needed this kind of intervention.  Everywhere we conduct the training, the participants always echo the difference that the training brings to their personal and professional lives.  All of this would not be possible if it wasn’t because of the committed funding of the Infant Trust.  The funding we receive truly touches people’s lives in a very special way. 

At the end of this fourth training of 2011, one woman stood up and told of how this whole training started a healing process in her life.  She mentioned that when the training started, she was pessimistic about it.  She said after the first session, she knew she had not made a mistake by coming.

As the facilitator, there are no words to describe how much of an impact the training has on these women....... I have learned so much from these women.  Although they learn from me, they have knowledge no one can fathom"

Thank you a thousand times to everyone who contributes to our work.

Christmas is no fun for some

I have very mixed emotions in December - here in the west, at the end of the month, we gather together as families, celebrate holidays, buy each other whatever presents we can afford and have fun with our loved ones. Doesn't matter what faith we are from, it is a time of celebration and getting together. 


Then I have a moment to think about what it must be like for those who have little or nothing ... what would it be like for you if you you were a girl, at school, who lived in South Africa on the breadline. Not much to look forward to in major presents although I'm sure the family would try to do what it can to make the season a bit special; but the TV and internet and girlie chatter would all be about what you 'must' have and what you 'must' wear creating great expectations. Then next week you would break up from school for the 'party' and 'celebration' month, probably on 15th December. 


16th December is a national holiday in South Africa - it's called Reconciliation Day; on that day you have the highest chance of being raped - it is the worst day of the year for rape, assault and violence against girls and women. The numbers are quite, quite shocking. One in two girls will be raped in their lives and high numbers are attacked on 16th December.


After that your Christmas and New year wouldn't be much fun, and no-one would be celebrating.

Chai Patel - such a staunch supporter

On Sunday 13th 2011 November Channel Four in the UK broadcast a film featuring Dr. Chai Patel.  The programme is about people who have made a lot of money and go, incognito, to find and help struggling services http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/4od - in my last blog I mentioned Chai as he has been such a great supporter of and believer in our work. 


It was a terrific programme I am so delighted that the world had an opportunity to see what a very special person he is, and how much he supports the causes he quietly encourages and helps to sustain ..... as he has done us for six years

His support for us and our work has largely gone unsung, but I know that it is only through his initial belief in what we could do and the consequences of his continued commitment to our work that has, with other treasured donors, helped to us to make the lives of over 140,000 children in South Africa immeasurably better.

Downs .... and ups

Everywhere I go these days I hear of funding drying up, people giving less and services having to close.  It is an endless sad tale of vital services suffering because donors are withdrawing their support and their money.


Only this week we heard about another essential rape crisis centre in Cape Town that has lost critical funding from the EU which means they will have to scale down all their services.  The impact of the Euro-zone crisis goes far and wide and deep affecting people in the most unexpected of places.  We can't fill in any of the gaps because we are experiencing some of the same pinches .... although amazingly most of our supporters are remaining true to us and continue to help, but the charitable sector both at home and abroad is suffering badly as philanthropic and organisational funding dries up. 


And there is still such a lot of waste with money sloshing about the big charities in swanky buildings and well-paid staff ...  in my bad moments I often wonder why we seem to want to look after big organisations or animal charities when there are millions of vulnerable children left unsupported.


But then, what do I know, I just run a charity trying to stop some of the worst abuses against small children in a country that doesn't seem to care.


So now, having been rude about whole countries and ticked off everybody else, did you see 'Secret Millionaire' on C4 [UK] last night? http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/4od This is a programme about UK millionaires who abandon their lives and go undercover to help people right at the other end of the money scale ... and last night it was the turn of our great supporter and Patron Dr Chai Patel who cares deeply about vulnerable people and children and who, in six years of incredible help and support for our work, never asks for any publicity or recognition.  


If you didn't see it, then try to watch it sometime; it really affirms what good guys there are in the world despite the recession, and Chai is one of those who will help even more because there is a recession.

... oh the rhetoric

I have heard so many times that rapists and perpetrators of violence against women and children in South Africa have no place in society, and that they belong behind bars.

At yet another opening of a Thuthuzela [crisis] Care Centre a Minister stresses the need to increase and improve services aimed at protecting girls from rape and empowering young people in general. Thuthuzela Care Centres are supposedly one-stop facilities introduced as an essential part of South Africa's anti-rape strategy, aimed at reducing secondary trauma for the victim, improving conviction rates and reducing the cycle time for finalising cases.

In one of her Thuthuzela opening speeches the Minister said  "In just three years, 28 Thuthuzela Care Centres have been established in the country, with more than 34 000 victims visiting the centres for assistance. The group of children between the ages of 12 and 17 years are emerging as the most vulnerable group, constituting the majority (about 15 000) of the people visiting these centres," 


In theory the units have police officers trained to deal with cases of abuse and include forensic social workers to assist child victims in particular to submit compelling evidence in court. 


Well hooray for that, but I know of at least three of these centres which have been set up on a wing and a prayer with a well meaning and basically untrained volunteer, or someone on a meagre stipend, manning these centres. However wonderful and committed they are, they have neither the skills nor psychological strength, nor contacts nor certainty of a future to be giving therapy and support through the traumatic months to court.  Yet I know the police are referring some pretty grim cases to these women.

Of course it is better than nothing, or being seen by a disinterested policeman but it is yet another tiresome reminder that there is a huge gap between the rhetoric of Ministers and the reality on the ground.


And children continue to suffer.

A complicated pattern

If a mother protects her son who has been accused of sexual violence, does that make the mother a perpetrator of violence as well?


If that same mother was raped several times in her life and nobody listened or did anything, and is therefore herself a survivor of multiple abuse, is she so inured to the horror of it all  that she can't see beyond the protection of her son .... after all, she was raped and no-one did anything, why should she care about someone else's child?

A couple of months back I came across a young woman who didn't report her common-law husband who had raped at least one other little girl living nearby and finally her 6 year old daughter. She said that reporting him would wreck her family because there would be no money coming in.  It emerged that she [the mother] had been raped three times as a child and because it 'happened to everybody' couldn't understand the big fuss about what happened to her daughter?


The man left and the children were eventually given treatment. The man was finally arrested for stealing in a township 200km away and his other crimes identified because he finally confessed to raping over 50 women and children. 


There is lots of research showing that if they are not stopped after the first time, by the time a rapist is arrested he could have raped and brutalised tens of women and children.  


There are many, many other stories of women who have protected their men folk, even when the same men have raped small children, and even their own daughters.... the question is always why... WHY?


Its much more complicated than first appears

Where in the world are you?

We are a small charity but we have never been short of ambition, and we appear to be having some impact around the globe. 

We are based in the United Kingdom (that’s where we do most of our fund raising) and our work is carried out in South Africa. But where are you, our readers? We have some statistics on visitors to our website, and there’s no doubt you are a diverse audience. 

Half of the readership last month [Sept 2011] was based in the United States. In second place was China (25%) and, third, came Russia (15%). If you've done the maths you’ll have worked out that 90% of visitors came from one of these three countries. 

Remarkably, the UK accounted for only 2% and South Africa was 0.62%. 

Wherever you are in the world it’s very good to know you are taking an interest in our work. And before you leave today you are very welcome to make a donation.....  Just go to our website http://www.infant-trust.org.uk/donate.htm and offer something, in any currency you like.  

It will help in our work to prevent very young children in South Africa from being abused. 

Put a smile on a youngster’s face and a smile on yours too.

Glorious autumn

I'm on my travels again and this time to USA and Canada to drum up some support and to have a nice time .... one is working the other not quite so much!


I have been travelling through the northern states of the US and the southern part of Quebec watching the glory of a New England autumn/fall unfold in front of us, and it is truly spectacular - I am a real autumn lover but I have never seen anything quite like the sparkling range of colours on a Vermont mountain.  Stunning, it really raises the spirits.


And that's what makes the downside seem so tough ... all this glorious, amazing colour, big space, blue skies and  eye-boggling beauty to be seen everywhere and yet, even here, there are significant signs of domestic violence and child abuse.


Now I'm not just out of the nursery, and I know this happens everywhere .... beautiful trees or not ... but where it is so lush and gorgeous outside then the devastating downside of human behaviour against the most vulnerable seems somehow even more awful. 


Maybe when I return to the UK and the rain it will seem somehow better...  ?

Such a small thing

In August on my recent visit to South Africa, I took 50 hand knitted individually designed teddies from some truly devoted women in and around the the south east of England. I managed to get them through customs ... although that is another story in itself .... and finally, on my last day, got them to the service south of Johannesburg where the ever impressive Antje runs, with our support, an outreach service helping battered and abused children and adults.

As part of the service there is a group called the Red Roses - a group set up to help pre-school girls [ie under 6 years old] who have been abused / sexually assaulted. These are little ones who have little in life and where their innocence has been brutally taken away. They have few toys or possessions and Antje and her staff struggle to find things they can give the girls as a momento of their healing.

As part of the programme the girls, and their mothers/carers, go away for a fun time to a camp.The weekend is at the end of the programme and is a huge 'treat' for the girls. It was at this camp that Antje gave each one of the girls one of the teddies as an extra and very personal keepsake.  

The girls were absolutely thrilled - to have a teddy is special, to have an individual one all of their own to keep is a rare event.

It takes such a small thing to help children who have little feel valued and happy again.

High praise

It's not often that I praise anything to do with the sexual and other abuse of small children, but today is different.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862412233/my-piece-of-sky-memories-of-child-sexual-abuse

I urge you to take a look at this book.  The link takes you to a site where you can [or not] make a donation to help get this book published.  Either way it is worth looking at the pictures. 


The photos that Mariella has taken are truly truly stunning.  It is often difficult to describe, in words, quite how awful is the abuse of small children but these black and white pictures knock you for six.  Yes, they are a bit graphic in places but more than that they really make you stop and think. 


There are pics of children and police and parents and perpetrators and somehow sum up what is going on, so of course I think everybody from here to everywhere else should see them.


When ever I go to South Africa - as in August - and meet and talk and listen to folks working in the field of child protection or with abused children this is what I see and hear, and Mariella somehow conveys the horror of it all.


It is why we do what we do.

Today is upbeat day

I know I've said this before, but our work isn't all unremitting gloom and doom so, on a lighter note, since I've been back in the UK and had time to look back on my trip and everything around it there are some real REAL positives that give us great impetuous to keep going when the times are tough. 

Where I stay -  Melville House in Johannesburg - is a delight; Heidi is a gem,  the staff kind and considerate and there are always extremely interesting people to talk to .... the range of people from Europe and other places working in South Africa is mind boggling. If you ever go to Johannesburg you must stay there. 

Working with all our partners and projects in South Africa feels like a real privilege - they are doing so well, and there is such an upbeat feel to all the work that I have to say HUGE thanks again to those who make it possible.  My abiding memories of all the children in the crèches, how they and the people who run the crèches develop over the years, and how secure we hope the future will be for them and all the other children coming along later makes everything worthwhile.

I am ever grateful for all those bits and pieces of money and support that come in daily / weekly. Of course I love our major funders to pieces, but to all the smaller funders and helpers who give us their money and their trust  ...  thank you, thank you, thank you. The funds are being spent wisely and effectively and [to use another cliché] together we really are making a difference

A view from afar ...

So now I'm back, what are my reflections from far away?


Things are still grim for thousands of people but on my travels I have met some astonishing people who have managed to rise above stuff that would sink many of us; somehow they haven't turned into abusers or criminals and will lead decent, good, ordinary lives. 


I have met boys with the most appalling start and first few years in life who have, with help, transformed themselves into really decent, considerate, hard working and positive role models for gang boys. 


Yet, and yet, the thing that most sticks in my mind today is this issue of trafficking live children for body parts. Yes I know it is a grim subject but it really needs raising time and again because it should be known about - particularly as it is happening in such numbers in a 'developed' country that many of us might visit. 


We all know that official statistics always under-egg the real numbers, but even these are showing that at least two children every week are being trafficked for body parts in South Africa.


There is a stunningly good piece of research funded by the Government of Norway and completed in late 2010 [and the only research - why??] on this matter of trafficking for body parts in and between Mozambique and South Africa.


I don't want to put anyone off their tea, but this is just a couple of things just to highlight what is going on ....

1. An informant in South Africa spoke of a young schoolgirl taken by “four men driving in a red car when she was coming from school”. She was still in her uniform when she was discovered a week later. Her  [.....I'll spare you this bit .....] had been removed. It appears that this girl had been abducted purely for the purpose of removing body parts and would therefore be considered trafficked.
2. In the14 months to mid-2010 the prime age for trafficking children for body parts was between 3 and 18 years 

We hear about the odd story from time to time when a sad body is fished out of the Thames, but never on this scale. Imagine what would happen if this level of trafficking was occurring in any European country. Pity the media can't make it a high profile campaign to stop such practices.........

Beacons of Light

So, another trip to South Africa comes to an end.

I visited our partners at Ekupholeni Mental Health and Trauma Centre – EMHC – run by the completely awesome and inspiring Antje, who seems to be able to expand the work every year despite overwhelming odds against doing anything at all.

They’ve been operating for years out of tin huts and converted container lorries in the grounds of the ghastly Natalspruit Hospital – filthy, smelly and rat ridden.

And what amazing work they do, helping victims of abuse in groups and and one to one counselling. They work with some very damaged children and adults. Antje enthuses all her staff and is forever pushing the boundaries of what is possible. 

No wonder Happy can’t stay away. He started as a community volunteer and is now football coach with the Ghetto Boyz – an amazing success and an amazing person.  Football continues to be a great diversion for very violent young men. Apart from the football these teenagers go through a very intensive life-skills and group experience, and find it hard to leave at the end.

The most notable success is the boy who joined Ghetto Boyz with a really awful background – you wouldn’t hug him for fear of robbery or a knifing. He was spotted by a scout and is now a regular member of the 1^st team of the Pirates, one of the top teams in South Africa.  He often comes to visit the Boyz and it gives everyone hope that someone from Katorus can do so well – but, in their own way, all these boys are success stories, thanks to EMHC.

There are these amazing beacons of light piercing the gloom.  It is a very good place to end my visit.

Different projects, Thousands Helped

Next stop on this visit to South Africa was Imisebeyelanga, where a support centre has been set up next to a police station because police are dealing with so many problems of domestic violence and child abuse. The long term aim is to have centres in each local police station, and have a roving social worker who can take children to places of safety and support carers.

It was good to visit Wilhelmina and the Mogodu Children’s Refuge. Recently Wilhelmina took in a 10 month boy and his 3 year old sister. Their teenage mother is a prostitute, on drugs, and incapable of caring for her children – indeed she didn’t want to. The poor mites are in a pretty bad way.

When Liz and I visited on a hot sunny day in February there were 20 children, now on this freezing wet day in August there are 26. The home appears to expand to absorb them as required. 

On the way back to the offices of Imisebeyelanga I heard that they had put in an application to the local newspapers to run an abuse awareness campaign in all grades of schools. It is such a good idea I have said we will match the funds they secure from the newspaper up to a maximum of R20,000 (£1,700) providing they send in the community workers in their bright green T-shirts in our logos!  They were thrilled.

I spoke to Ann Parker, the woman who we funded and made a video for primary schools about ‘stranger danger’. It has gone down a storm and now she wants to make a film for pre-schools and primary schools about ‘don’t touch’ which she hopes to get onto the main broadcasting channel – it would be done in the three main languages and have some workbooks to go with it. I’ll keep looking at it to see where it is going and we may give her some more help. 

I also met our friends at Johannesburg Child Welfare [JCWS]. We support them in doing lots of training; in fact by the end of October we will have trained more than 350 people who work in communities to protect and care for children at risk.

I had a moment totting up all the training we have funded, not just at JCWS but everywhere, and the numbers are quite incredible to me now – nearly eighteen hundred people trained, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand children impacted and protected and, amazingly, more than seven thousand abused children helped.    

Beaming and blinking

I spent a day with our friends at COPESSA, a tiny charity striving in the face of tremendous difficulties in Protea Glen, a suburb of Soweto.  Projects get started here but volunteers drift away. I’m told local people are not interested in self-help projects; groups of young men just litter the streets, doing little. But there is one very happy story to report. Busi, who received one of our bursaries to train as a social auxiliary worker, has received her certificate after 18 months hard work. At the age of 54 she is now qualified and, even if COPESSA can’t find the money to employ her, the local welfare office will take her on as they are so short of all sorts of social workers. I can’t tell you how beaming she is.  

It looks like we’ll be expanding the Infant Trust within South Africa. We have the funds to get the Caring for Crèches project off the ground in Eastern Cape so my next visit was to the Childline offices in Port Elizabeth. Unemployment in the province is very high, there are many children trafficked for body parts and child slavery and hospitals believe abuse is on a high scale.

It emerged that they have been trying to find ways to give practical skills training to folks in crèches because they, like so many others, recognise how important the pre-schools are for so many vulnerable children; when they saw the practical nature of our training manual I think they were sold! They were even talking about what they would want to add to the manual – just bits so far about trafficking and the impact of no fathers on children.

They are going to gather more information from Mpumalanga and North West province and confirm in a couple of weeks whether or not they want to start this programme.  In the meantime I’m going to send them various bits of information about our requirements for a proposal and reporting back to us. We talked about getting this going by early October – well I did, they blinked a bit.  We got on very well though, there is certainly a huge need here and they obviously feel they can work with us; like everyone, after a few early hiccups, I think they will deliver.  

Stealing Babies

As I travel around South Africa the stories of abuse continue. I was told about a woman who had a baby in hospital alone. She was laughed at during delivery for having no husband and when the baby was 3 hours old she was given her papers and told to go home.  She had no money so had to walk, still bleeding, trying to hitchhike to her home 3 days away. A man stopped and gave her a lift but he soon stopped again to push her out of the car.  Neither he, nor baby, will be seen again.

Childline think that he was commissioned to find a new-born baby to order as it happens all the time ... all the time?

I’ve been visiting Nelspruit to hear about the results of feedback from our C4C training. Four Orphans and Vulnerable Children [OVC] sites have been set up around the province, where they have registered 11,000 very vulnerable children.

At each site there is a Childline co-ordinator and counsellor who is the first point of call for anyone worried about abuse. They are planning two major meetings a year where every service comes together to help these children – getting birth certificates, getting subsidies, getting social help, getting health checks, sorting out educational problems. It’s a brilliant idea and the first two meetings have had a major impact.

They also have plans to target 6,000 of the most vulnerable children and provide local homework help, nutritional advice, HIV prevention, psycho-social support and help with grants and papers.

The downside of all this amazing work is that the stories of abuse come into the site co-ordinators thick and fast, plus many stories of trafficking, and it has clearly shocked many of the Childline folk to know quite how many children are being so badly treated.  

The Casual Acceptance of Rape

Continuing my visit to South Africa, I spent some time with Lindy Harris, a new friend for us, who is trying to start a non-government organisation to develop crèches as proper businesses with trained people and structured programmes for children. Apparently, she first heard about the Infant Trust from discussions in Zimbabwe; we don’t operate there but it’s good to know our reputation is spreading. 

We drove to a couple of townships. In Tshepesang, children were playing in the rubbish strewn open grounds and on the rutted tracks; there were open mines nearby and the air was thick, but the area has employment and some stability. At one crèche they have children as young as 18 months coming in from 5am to 6pm so their mothers can get to work. In the other township, Slovoville, I noticed intermittent electricity and only the occasional stand-pipe.  At one crèche toilet buckets were emptied onto nearby scrub land.

In both places they referred to the most amazing amount of abuse against the youngest of children in a very laid-back and off-hand sort of way with children left alone for hours. All around here the numbers of 12 and 13 year olds who are raped is very high. It is all so casually accepted.

We were taken to meet a mother from Lesotho, with six children to look after, who survives by occasionally selling second-hand clothes. Two of the children are her own, the other four belong to her daughter who was first raped at 11 years old; her daughter has vanished. In addition the husband was murdered three years ago outside the dwelling because he was thought to be messing with another man’s wife. She says life is better here than in Lesotho.

It's Never Easy

There are vast distances to cover in South Africa but journeys are fascinating. After hours travelling past brush, scrub and a few shanty towns we reached the provincial capital of Limpopo, Polokwane.

First stop was Childline for very difficult discussions about the crèche that should be fully registered by now but isn’t. There are simple things that should have been done in the past three years and I can’t understand the foot dragging. We have been pushing them to get the registration so we can work with them on another crèche. My message had to be that until the crèche was sorted out we wouldn’t be putting any more funds into Childline Limpopo, neither for the crèche nor the training programme. This wasn’t the news they wanted to hear but we haven’t closed the door completely.

There is no shortage of disturbing stories in this part of the world. I heard updates from Childline on the problem of children who disappear. There is no easy way to say this, but some children are viewed as a live source of body parts. Traffickers are getting bolder and are increasingly targeting children in the more populated areas. What happens to these poor children and how they suffer before they die is truly horrendous. The trafficking is almost certainly done to order for a rich family by a Sangoma, or witch doctor, to help cure a family member of something or other.  A major cultural change is necessary to eradicate these disgusting crimes because there seems to be a conspiracy of silence in the local townships.

Sad stories, good work and a tough decision

I'm back in South Africa. The weather is cold, the land is vast but inspiring work is taking place.

First off, a tough decision had to be made concerning our flagship programme, Caring for Crèches [C4C]. We have the funds to start a new crèche in west Limpopo but following a meeting with senior Childline officials it became clear this would be unwise. The existing crèche we fund is still not registered; there seems very poor leadership and little understanding about anything being wrong. We’ll consider investing in Eastern Cape instead.

I had a long day visiting our excellent partners at Childline North West province to talk about the progress of C4C there. I heard a sad litany of rising numbers of abuse, the levels of abuse getting worse, the ages of the abused children getting younger, the ages of the perpetrators getting younger (some as young as 8) and social issues of poverty and unemployment becoming much more severe.

The folk in the crèches were thrilled to see us and we spent ages listening to their stories and hearing how they enjoyed the training. I was shown many children at various crèches that the ladies think are being badly treated – a very sad progression of little mites.

As a result of all the information coming in to the Childline crisis line they have taken some really proactive action, and decided upon a new three-headed approach to protecting children:

1. Raising awareness in all schools,

2. Training crèche leaders to recognise and act on suspected abuse,

3. Training groups of local counsellors to work with families where abuse is suspected.

I also confirmed that we would continue funding the C4C programme into 2012, and possibly look at helping with the costs of another trainer to add to the programme as our very experienced trainer has been at some risk this year, working in rural areas on her own.

Packing my bags

As I pack my bags today for my next trip to meet our friends and colleagues in South Africa I wonder, apart from the extraordinary snow that has been falling across most of the country, what I will find. 


Trust me, I thought this morning, leaving the blistering heatwave that has hit the south east of the UK to go to a country where the snow rarely falls except when I am visiting .... but there we go, it has been snowing, and I expect it will be the wrong sort of snow too so no angels in the snow!  Still it means huge clear and sunny skies, crisp cold mornings, warming up during the day before chilling down at night ... lovely. As for the packing, as a wise friend said this morning you can always take layers off, but not put them on so I go laden with layers - and a coat.


Because I caught a nasty bug the last time I was in SA it is a while since I properly saw some of our friends.  In particular it will be so good to catch up with the Caring for Crèches projects in North West and Mpumalanga Provinces. They work so hard and are producing such astonishing results that it is a real pleasure going and talking to them about how things are changing and what we can do to further support their work; to date, in this programme alone across two provinces, we have trained almost one thousand people to recognise and act on suspected child abuse - and there is some serious abuse against tiny tots from 6 months to 5 years old.  Again, just in this programme, we have helped to identify and gain treatment for around four thousand children and have impacted positively on the lives of between sixty and a hundred thousand other children. 


Mind blowing, just mind blowing.


Every time I say the numbers like that it just knocks me out ....  


So don't mind the snow, or the rain or the cold or the mossies [well, I do mind them ....] I will be delighted to be frequently reporting back here on how my travels are going and what I am finding from all our supported programmes.  

Some happy news....

I had an update today from one of our long-standing partners who do amazing work training community workers and volunteers, who then go on to help hundreds [probably thousands by now..] of vulnerable children and families. It is a stunningly successful programme run by the completely indefatigable and driven Germa and Rina at Imisebeyelanga; Germa is of mature years and too used to be a nurse but I'll not mention again how much nurse/ex-nurses can get done if they set their minds to it......


Amongst all the very impressive things they have done recently is to have set-up a crisis and trauma centre in a local area of northern Gauteng - north west of Johannesburg for those who's geography of South Africa is a bit ropey - for women and children who have experienced violence and abuse; a service long overdue and really needed. With our help Imisebeyelanga also support the most extraordinary young woman who is running and developing a childrens refuge. If you read this blog regularly you will know I have mentioned this Mogodu home before .... it is a stunning achievement for a young woman who has been on the end of unspeakable violence herself.  


Recently when Michelle Obama visited South Africa she publicly lauded the achievements of a young woman from Soweto, yet I know Wilhelmina and many like her who, with a bit of encouragement and support from friends can surmount terrible personal histories to make a really significant difference to the lives of many, many others; Wilhelmina has established an amazing refuge for children who have been really seriously abused, often abandoned, maybe trafficked or just simply beaten half to death. At Mogodu they provide a roof over their heads, food and love, encouragement and security - such precious commodities. Now, again with the help of Imisebeyelanga, they have got formal funding from the National Lottery; with this they can put up some fencing, build another 'temporary structure' so the children don't all have to sleep 6-8 to a tiny room and do some painting to cover up the [huge] cracks.


This is such happy news ....... and is a shining example of what can be done with just a bit of help.

You what ??

Well now, just when you think you've heard it all, along comes something else from the courts that makes your head spin.


This week a man was acquitted from raping a girl as he claimed he was asleep and therefore didn't know what he was doing and wasn't responsible for his actions. He seems to have had sex with the girl, then went to put the kettle on to make a cup of tea [!] and then had sex with her again, and he says he was asleep all the time and therefore not responsible for his actions. 


Apparently there is a condition called sexsomia - this is where someone engages in unconscious, involuntary sexual behaviour during sleep, and is recognized as a rare but legitimate parasomnia.


It is a very bizarre story whichever way you look at it.... lets hope the 'sexsomia' plea doesn't catch on as an excuse for raping anyone.

Changed my mind?

This week I was going to write about Mr Malema and his actions stirring up gender and racial violence through his public rants ... but then I came across a story that changed my mind as this seems a bit more important today.


I am always going on about the violence against small children , and I sometimes wonder if this makes people think it is only in South Africa that the rape of toddlers and other such awful things happen - and of course, regrettably, it isn't.


There was a story in the papers over the weekend about a sad little three year old in Zimbabwe who was raped by a 53 year old man whilst his young girlfriend watched, and it is such a horribly familiar tale of men taking what they want and women colluding ... happens everywhere .... but for a once this isn't in South Africa, and I am struck by how many things the beleaguered people of Zimbabwe have to contend with.  


Same lack of respect for the law and basic human rights everywhere, I know, where-ever an oppressor rules; but the story reminded me of some children I came across years ago - a Zimbabwean family of four orphaned children who's whole adult family had been wiped out by violence and illness. They, in turn, endured horrendous violence, rape and beatings before eventually making their way to safety in South Africa. So today I changed my mind and thought I'd mention the children of Zimbabwe.

Freedom?

This morning I heard Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma talking about freedom. She was riveting and it got me thinking again about our own freedoms.... and basically how lucky we are in the west and in western democracies. I can go where I like, pretty much do as I want and, without hurting anyone, act in whatever manner I feel like. I can get drunk [I don't any more, but I could], wear what I want however weird [and sometimes it's weird....] I can speak out about anything in a thoroughly bigoted or boring way and at worst I might get ignored or even hassled, but I wouldn't die or be sent to Siberia.  


My children can go about their lives planning for the future and living for today worrying about education and mortgages, petrol prices and pensions, my grandchildren can grow up in relative peace and freedom and [unless they are very unlucky] without being attacked or being fearful


Today is my birthday and I think lucky me, lucky us  ....  

Slut walks

I find these so called slut walks quite thought provoking and, despite much chat around my friends and family, difficult to decide where I stand. On the one hand there seems to be no doubt that women/girls dressing in a highly provocative way in public seems to be an invitation to some men [after all the word means to provoke] and therefore potentially puts the women/girls at risk, yet the feminist and modern part of me says that women/girls should be able to dress as they please wherever they please without fear of being attacked or raped.


But now a slut walk is being planned in South Africa, I think there are other aspects to be taken into consideration .... for a start not all countries have the same views about the position of women in society. Surely, in countries where there is a less than respectful attitude to the absolute rights of women, or where patriarchy still holds sway, it is risky for groups of well meaning women to egg on all their sisters to wear whatever they like in public and encourage some exhibitionism whatever the local circumstances. 


In South Africa we all know there are appallingly high numbers of sexual abuse against girls; now add into this the creeping sexualisation of little girls through their clothes that is happening globally anyway. In rural areas and townships, for women and girls to be further encouraged to dress in even more skimpy clothes and to be perceived to be acting in sexually provocative ways in public is tantamount to leading them into danger. Also remember that in the background there are parts of South Africa where the majority of men still believe they can do what they like, take what they want and then, if asked, often excuse it by saying 'look what she was wearing, she was asking for it ...'


In this context, however much I would wish it wasn't so, it seems that to encourage such things in a slut walk is irresponsible,.