South Africa's children are under siege — and it's all our baby now

TimesLIVE

03-06-2025

As the country commemorates National Child Protection Week from May 29 to June 5 to raise awareness about the rights of children, we are once again reminded that this moment of reflection is not symbolic. It is urgent.
The latest crime statistics from the South African Police Service for the third quarter of the 2024/25 financial year (October to December 2024) reveal a distressing escalation of violence against children. During this period, 273 children were murdered, 480 were victims of attempted murder, and 2,164 suffered assaults with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. These figures are not mere numbers; they represent young lives lost or irrevocably damaged. They signify a society failing its most vulnerable members.
These figures are not abstractions. They are children with names, birthdays, families and futures that will never be realised. They are the silent dead in a country that is becoming disturbingly accustomed to the normalisation of violence.
A nation desensitised, a system in decay
The high rates of violence against children are not isolated incidents. They are the logical outcome of a deeply unequal society with weakened protective systems and an eroded social contract. Despite a progressive legal framework — the Children's Act, the Sexual Offences Act, the Child Justice Act — enforcement continues to falter. A recent report by our long-standing partner, the Teddy Bear Foundation, found that of more than 5,000 reported child abuse cases from 2019 to 2024, only 4% resulted in convictions. Four per cent! The rest were withdrawn, many due to lack of evidence or absence of witnesses; this is a telling sign of a justice system ill-equipped to protect those most in need of its care.
This failure is not technical. It is structural. It reveals a system where the burden to speak, to testify, to prove harm, still rests on traumatised children, often without access to support or protection. What we are seeing is not a justice system working poorly, but a justice system not working at all for children. The statistics are numbing. But the stories behind them are searing. We remember Uyinene Mrwetyana, murdered in 2019 — a case that galvanised a national reckoning and ignited the #AmINext movement. Her murder should have been the turning point. Instead, it has joined a litany of tragedies still unfolding.