As an independent child protection researcher and rights activist, I have been asked repeatedly why the government is considering drastic changes to the Child Protection Act that will potentially have a dire impact on adoptions in South Africa. I share my opinion based on my experience as a change management consultant for the past 20 years, and specifically in the child protection community for the past nine. In doing this I hope to speak for abandoned children who are left on the streets, rubbish heaps and latrines of South Africa every year, for too often they do not have a voice.
Experiences in child protection in South Africa
I entered the child protection community in 2010, the year child abandonment sky-rocketed in South Africa. Having experienced multiple miscarriages and suffering from postpartum depression, my mothering instincts were on high alert.
In July of our World Cup year, I was horrified to see a picture of a newborn baby girl who had been abandoned and who had died on a rubbish heap on the outskirts of Soweto – on the front page of a national newspaper. Calling around, I quickly realised that the issue of child abandonment was reaching epidemic proportions (estimated at 3,500 children in 2010 alone). However, the Department of Social Development at the time were refusing to acknowledge that it was a problem.
To put this in perspective, a social worker at one of the largest child welfare organisations in the country told me that a few years previously, they would see only one or two abandoned children a month, but in 2010 as many as five or six children were being delivered to their doors every week.