Pretoria - Mothers can abuse their children, a once abused woman told the Conference on Orphans, Children and Youth made vulnerable by HIV and Aids, which concludes today in Durban.
“My mother called me a curse and tried everything in her power to kill me with her own hands,” Hlengiwe Ntinga said on Thursday.
Ntinga grew up in a children’s home after she was rescued by social workers from an abusive mother. This after she reported her ordeal to social workers, who helped her to be moved to a children’s home where she stayed until she graduated as a nurse.
Speaking at the conference organised by the Department of Social Development, Ntinga expressed her gratefulness for the opportunities given to her by the department.
“The Department of Social Development has done a good job for children like me and deserves to be commended. I have been given an opportunity to dream, to be educated and to build my self-confidence.
“I was underprivileged but through the department, I am now privileged,” she said as she received a standing ovation from delegates.
The conference is held as part of the commemoration of the National Child Protection Week (CPW), which began on Monday.
Thembisa Shinga spoke about how she struggled to put food on the table for her younger siblings following the death of their mother in 2003.
“Life became tough for us when my mother passed away because she was the bread winner. I had to ask our neighbours for food for my younger siblings,” Shinga said.
Social workers also took her to a children’s home from where she completed her schooling. She has started a non-profit organisation that supports and speaks in schools and local radio stations as a motivational speaker. Shinga is also about to publish a book called “Believing is receiving”.
Tom Mkhizem – a community capacity enhancement expert from Project Literacy, said most of the challenges children raised through dialogues were a manifestation of poor values in society.
“Children said adults take them along to drink in taverns or send them to buy liquor. They also complained of physical and emotional abuse by parents and foster parents; a lack of emotional support, teenage pregnancy as a result of peer pressure, drug abuse, easy access to porn and sugar daddies,” he said.
Mkhize urged that a programme of action be developed to attend to urgent matters that posed a danger to children’s lives.
CPW is commemorated in the country annually to raise awareness of the rights of children as articulated in the Children's Act of 2005.
The campaign, which began in 1997, also aims to mobilise all sectors of society and communities in the effort of ensuring care and protection for children. - SAnews.gov.za
