Volume 52 Issue 7 - July 2014 : Feature

You will resent yourself when you come to the realisation that one of the 13 children you called street kids at Jwaneng`s Chicken Licken food outlet and refused to give food when they begged you has died. His corpse, due to lack of traceable origins, could not be buried at Jwaneng`s graveyards but a nearby thicket. Father William of the Catholic Church was there.

 “The child died of the cold and I took the corpse to the mortuary. While it was still lying there, we did not know where to bury it and I drove to the bush and found a place where we were told belonged to the child`s great-grandmother and that`s where we buried the corpse,” says Father William. 

As if oblivious of the tragedy that befell one of their colleagues, the other children remain in the street, bound together by a common thread of sorrow. 

For those whose origins can be traced, you will learn as you get intimate with them, that home isn`t the sweetest place to be. The children have terribly suffered at home and fled to the streets hoping for a better life. “Some of them are born of parents living in the streets, some we have tried to trace their origins but in vain, it`s a sad situation,” reveals Father William. 

One of the children, the eldest named Onnetse, can barely remember his surname or at least his close relatives and describes Sese as his home village. He tells Kutlwano, rather rebelliously, that one evening while they gathered around fire with his parents at some place they were living at, his father battered his mother with a metal rod leaving her with bruises on the head and a broken arm following a misunderstanding. “They were both drunk and they always fought when drunk,” he says.

The injuries later progressed into a prolonged illness that took the poor woman`s life. “She had sores all over her body and finally died under my care,” says the child. It was then that, he fled home in fear that in the absence of his mother he was the immediate target for his father`s explosive temper. Now 18 years old, he has been living in the streets for a very long time.

Another one, Onkarabile* from Moshaneng, with origins and parents known, had to endure beatings from his father and could not stand a hostile family environment. “They did not want me to play with other children. When I did they beat me up. I would go and hide in the bush and they would search for me and beat me up,” he says.

 Violence always defined the relationship between his mother and stepfather. “If cattle strayed into our field at night, he asked my mother to wake up and drive them out, and if my mother was scared to go to the field alone, he would beat her up,” he says.  He adds that his mother always protested against the beatings that almost amounted to a “leisure activity”. 

One day he decided that he had had enough and so he took a journey into the bush that would later lead him into Jwaneng where he found other children living in the street. “I stayed in the bush for many days before I came to Jwaneng but I find life here better than at home. I don`t want to go back there,” he says. 

Almost with a rebellious attitude, the rest of his colleagues decline to talk about their backgrounds. Instead, they ran away into the streets. At least for now the children are living in father William`s storeroom in the church`s precincts.

“I decided to put the children here so that they escape the harsh winter colds and they seem to be enjoying themselves here. At first they spent most of the time in the street and only came here to sleep,” reckons Father William. With assistance from the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, Father William has also managed to enroll the children in school through the back to school programme. Almost all of them are in standard one.

“We are also working with the Department of Civil and National Registration to obtain birth certificates and identity cards (Omang) for the children. It`s promising,” he says.  Without biological parents and not knowing their surname or a place of origin, registering the children has, however, proved to be a tall order. 

“We are currently struggling to feed the children because we rely solely on donations from symphathisers but we are also in talks with government to assist and it`s promising,” reveals Father William. He says UNICEF and the British Commission have also visited the children. 

“The children are just here on temporary basis while we are still in talks with relevant authorities to map out how best to assist them,” he says. ENDS

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