Special Hearings — Children's Hearings — 1997-05-14

CHAIRPERSON: The previous speakers mentioned the depression and the despair,   the feeling that life is worthless and there is nothing to look forward to.   May youth have reported experiencing amnesia, whereby they forget and they can't   remember important things in their lives. Many others suffer psychosomatic problems   - constant headaches, constant backache, stomach aches. Others develop eating   and sleeping problems, and many, if not all, experience a constant sense of   anger and betrayal, a sense of bitterness and resentfulness that the adults   who were meant to have protected them, and the police, and the army and the   teachers, and the school principals, and all the people in society who were   supposed to protect children, let them down.

CHAIRPERSON: But children recover from such feelings if they are given sufficient   support. I think if we look at our present Government today we will see so many   of them were young leaders who experienced repression, detention, torture, but   they have come through. In fact they are the

CHAIRPERSON: /very

CHAIRPERSON: very leaders of our society today. So it is clear to me that   children can overcome the most horrible experiences if they get the support   from their society that they deserve.

CHAIRPERSON: When we asked youth in the townships around Durban what they   needed, the support they needed, they mentioned how important it was to be able   to talk to experienced adults. They spoke about how important it is to have   someone who is sensible to talk about your anger with, somebody who will not   pour petrol on your anger, but will give you good advice and will really listen   to you and help you find a solution. They needed somebody, a trusted friend,   who would understand their feelings and would listen to them and help them find   ways out of the trouble that was in their lives. That is what the youth were   asking from the adults around them.

CHAIRPERSON: But for many children in this province the very family and   friendship support networks which they relied on were destroyed by the policies   of apartheid. Apartheid policies systematically destroyed the family life of   black communities, making it very difficult for parents to take care of their   children and to be emotionally available to listen to their children. I want   to quote what the Reverend Frank Chikani said in 1986.

CHAIRPERSON: "Being born into apartheid South Africa for most             black children meant being subjected to the deprivation and violence             associated with living in the squalid, crime-infested ghettos created             by the apartheid government for those not classified white. It meant

CHAIRPERSON: /malnutrition

CHAIRPERSON: malnutrition, poor health; receiving an education             in the usually understaffed, ill-equipped, and overcrowded schools             designed for blacks; discriminatory social security and social support;             hardly ever seeing ones parents, because they either worked long hours             for exploitative, local, predominantly white-controlled enterprises,             or were migrant labourers living far away from their homes; living             in communities constantly destabilised by forced removals ... (inaudible             - end of Side B, Tape 2) ... predominant white group. In essence apartheid             gave rise to, and fed on, the brutalisation of black children and             the communities in which they were located. To a certain extent the             brutalisation of black children can be seen as having been a precondition             for the functioning and the success of apartheid, because in order             to succeed this system had to produce an oppressed group that was             so dehumanized that it would accept white dominance without too much             protest. The pressure on families was relentless - the poverty, the             degradation of the living conditions of the townships, the rural areas,             and the informal settlements; the malnutrition, which had in some             years as many as four

CHAIRPERSON: /children

CHAIRPERSON: children dying per day of malnutrition; the migrant             labour practices, which meant that so many fathers were away from             their children; and, perhaps worse in our patriarchal society, that             so many mothers were separated from their children for long years.             And those parents who were there for their children working the long             hours. Sometimes leaving the home before the children were even away             for school, and coming home after the children were in bed.

CHAIRPERSON: So whom did these children have to talk to when the police   had tear gassed their school and beaten them on the way home? Who did the children   have to listen to them after they had come out of torture and detention? In   many cases a traumatised child was merely an extra burden on the family, another   problem for parents to have to deal with amongst all the many problems they   already had.

CHAIRPERSON: And I think, as it has been said, that children became alienated   from their parents, and lost trust, and lost the faith, and lost the communication   that should exist between the generations, and this has had very dire consequences   for our society.

CHAIRPERSON: Many people have spoken about the increase of crime in South   Africa at the moment, and many have blamed the availability of weapons, the   arms smuggling that is still continuing, and all sorts of other social factors,   which do contribute to the crime. There have been a lot of complaints about   policing, there have been a lot of

CHAIRPERSON: /complaints

CHAIRPERSON: complaints about not following up on crime and so on, but there   has been so little looking at what - what is our society to young people who   have been hurt by the past? What is bringing them back into society? What are   we asking them to do when there are no jobs and there are no recreation facilities,   and there are no counselling services, and there are no places for them to understand   their pain, and to come to terms with it and to move on from it?

CHAIRPERSON: This has had many bad effects on community life. Often in the   poorest communities it is those communities

CHAIRPERSON: where people have been the most traumatised, and yet the very   developments which would bring hope to these communities is retarded by the   lack of trust, and the hypersensitivity, and the power struggles, and the inability   to actually communicate trust and relate to one another which is necessary for   development to go forward.  I believe in this province millions of rands   were budgeted for development last year which were not spent because development   committees were too conflicted to make proper decisions about spending the money.   So we have the tragic situation where the very people who were hurt the most   have become so hurt that they are the ones who are damaging the chances for   themselves and their communities to move forward, and I think that we need to   understand that the effects of violence are not simple, the effects of trauma   are not simple. It is not simply that a person is exposed to horrendous events   and immediately becomes traumatised. It is the society in which they live which   determines whether they are or are not traumatised, and it is our responsibility   to make sure that we take this

CHAIRPERSON: /seriously,

CHAIRPERSON: seriously, and that we put taxpayers' money aside, we put resources   aside, and we pay attention to the needs of young people so that there are the   support services that they have asked for, the support services that they have   spoken about are provided, or we will only have ourselves to blame if the society   sinks further into the misery and pain which was started by the agents of apartheid.