SA has been a country not fit for its children. Even after its world acclaimed political dispensation that came with April 27 1994, the conditions children are in are nowhere near inspiring for our 30-year-old democracy to write home about. The legacy of the country’s ugly past still lives with us.

To all people who were not white, the apartheid system was vicious. Born to parents fated to make ends meet in such a system, conditions of children were not any better.

They had no rights within their families, in their communities and in schools to speak of. Failure by their parents to pay school fees took away their right to education. Lack of access to healthcare facilities, placed them in harm’s way resulting in premature deaths.

With the nationwide revolt of June 16 1976, children were not spared. Their murder by security forces was unprecedented and so were the detentions that followed.

The onslaught continued into the 80s and early 90s. Children were caught up in the calculated "black-on-black violence" as was guided by the hidden hand of apartheid death squads sworn to create destruction and mayhem in communities of the oppressed.

Children were randomly arrested, detained without trial and brutally assaulted while in detention. All manner of cruelty visited upon was justified by the state of emergency. Most of them were driven out of school, displaced by the violence.

The state-sponsored violence into schools not only disrupted but also created dysfunctionality.

When 1994 came, the first action by a democratic government was to ratify international legal instruments to ensure that the rights of children were protected and promoted in the country. These instruments included the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. These were designed to ensure that children’s rights were secured and sacrosanct within families, communities and the country.

To ensure implementation of these instruments, the National Programme of Action for Children (NPAC) was created, at first co-ordinated by the department of health and later transferred to the presidency and located within the Office on the Rights of the Child.

This body consisting of all relevant national government departments, all premiers and civil society representatives was the engine to ensure the implementation of the delivery of all services for the promotion and protection of the rights of children.

The critical function of the NPAC was to monitor the implementation of child rights services and to report to the nation and to multilateral organisations like the United Nations, the African Union, the International Labour Organisation and others. This structure was also responsible for ensuring that new legislation and policies being developed were in the best interests of children while ensuring the prioritisation of the survival, protection, development and participation of children in all matters that affect them.

This child rights infrastructure was at the core of educating society about the concept of children having rights, especially within families, as children at the time were seen as minors to parents with no rights. This structure was also responsible for initiating Children’s Day, which was dedicated to celebrating the holistic rights of all children.

The NPAC was the engine behind the critical changes that the country has seen in the implementation of children’s rights.

This included free healthcare for children and expectant mothers, free education, the National School Nutrition Programme, the child support grant, child labour policies, the Child Justice Act, the Children’s Act, Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit and many other positive developments aimed at promoting the rights of children.

However, there are still many instances where children are being physically and sexually violated within their families and communities. While some provinces have ensured that police stations have social workers stationed there on full-time basis, others still do not have this service. 

Sadly, the imbalances of the past are repeating themselves in the present. While some children can walk to a nearby school, others still need scholar transport that is sometimes not there at all with some subject to the daily hazard of crossing rivers to reach school.

Some schools are commendably endowed with modern infrastructure, others have overcrowded classrooms with pit toilets associated with incidents of excruciating deaths.

The recurring imbalance expresses itself in some children being guaranteed three meals a day, while others go to bed on empty stomachs. While some children have access to technology and internet services at school and at home, others do not even have electricity in their schools and homes that are not more than one-roomed shacks.

This clearly indicates that while the rights of children have changed a lot, the road is still a long and winding one for most.

There is an urgent need that as we move towards the seventh parliament and administration, we look at what worked effectively in the past and how systems that worked for the rights of children can be reinstated as we need all hands on deck in the protection of our children.

• Mkhwanazi-Xaluva is chairperson of the National Children and Violence Trust