Life as children know it.

And so another visit to South Africa comes to an end.

We went to Potchefstroom - south west of Johannesburg - a fairly prosperous place surrounded by townships. In the outlying areas we have been running Caring for Crèches with Childline for nearly five years now.

The ladies at the crèches were warm and so welcoming, clearly overwhelmed by the training and so positive about what they could do for the children. But scores of children were crammed into a tiny space, with no area to play outside. It must have been 45C. And there they sit, stinky nappies everywhere but good as gold eating or being fed mealie meal and some sort of vegetable gravy.

The therapist at Childline told us of one particular child she has been working with since October. The girl had been playing outside when she disappeared. She was found the next day staggering along the road confused and bleeding. The girl had broken cheekbones, a broken jaw, a broken skull, gashes all down her face, broken limbs and hips and had been wrapped in a cloth and dumped on a rubbish tip. She had been raped several times and there had clearly been an attempt to beat her to death.

The child identified several men who had raped her, and then she identified her aunt who had initially abducted her. The men are free and the aunt is released on bail, now living two streets from the girl who is said to be ‘doing well’ and is back at her crèche.

The little girl is just five years old.

Horrendous first day in a new job.

Here in South Africa we have been talking bursaries for community volunteer courses. We know the courses provide volunteers with great support and knowledge in their day to day work, and that’s why we’ve been supporting this programme for six years.

One recruit had a dramatic start on her first day as a volunteer for a community based organisation. With no training at all she was asked to visit a house because a neighbour was worried about two little girls left in the care of their 14 year old brother. It turned out the boy had been systematically raping his 3 and 5 year old sisters; the parents were nowhere to be seen. It later emerged he had been raped from about the age of 5 by an uncle who had vanished. Now imagine being 22 years old, having no community experience, your first day of work as a volunteer and you walk into that. This is what these recruits face because social workers, who are supposed to be mentoring and working with them, are overloaded and can’t take on more cases.

We support 10 places. Eight thousand people applied for this course in August. Money is tight but we must continue to support this.

Goodbye gun gang. Hello University.

Next stop on this visit: Johannesburg and the Ekupholeni Mental Health Centre run by the saintly Antje. Over the years she has run therapy groups for hundreds of people – those abused and those who perpetrate violence.

One success story is a boy who fell into gun crime after being orphaned at the age of 10. He and his gang were robbing trains at gunpoint before he joined the Ghetto Boys, the programme using football to divert young men away from crime. He eventually returned to school and is now at Pretoria University studying civil engineering.  

One woman was shot in the chest by her husband. After extensive surgery she went home, salvaged her children and booted her husband out. Her husband wasn’t charged because she refused to testify. Her price is that he goes to the men’s domestic violence group and has finally disclosed that he was raped and beaten repeatedly as a small child. 

These two stories exemplify the lives of so many – complex, convoluted, dysfunctional and repetitive, all stemming from a childhood of abuse, neglect, violence and lack of care. 

We will continue to support Ekupholeni in their work helping victims and deflecting abusers. 

We also caught up with Anne Parker, who provides puppet shows to help pre-school children protect themselves from harm. Her assistant, Nichole, tells the most unnerving story of her own childhood – the unwanted child of a teenage mother, raped at 5 years old, neglected and later molested. She worked to put herself through university and trained and practiced as a teacher. Anne and Nichole want to help create a generation of children throughout South Africa who have not been abused - not a small ambition.    

They are currently in the process of writing and shooting a series of TV programmes for showing on public television and in schools. We have funded the equipment - sound system, puppets, puppet staging, MP3 player and carry bags - for Nichole to go out with the puppet show to wherever she is asked. Already she has been to schools and corporate employer crèches. This is an amazing initiative and deserves every success.