Musa Mpofu may be pint-sized, but he is becoming the poster-child for a project that plans to rehabilitate 60 000  South African juvenile offenders.

Project gives juvenile offenders a second chance

The 14-year-old, who has a history of petty thieving, has helped six other gang members escape their lives of crime, and has even helped establish a soccer team to occupy bored youth in Alexandra township, Gauteng.

Mpofu's anti-crime advocacy is thanks to the Khulisa New Directions programme, a 15-week pilot project aimed at rehabilitating juvenile offenders. The project, begun in March last year, is part of an initiative by the government, contained in the Child Justice Bill, to “divert” juvenile offenders into rehabilitation programmes rather than jail.

Thus far, New Directions has proved very successful with only 3% of 236 delinquents admitted to the programme re-offending. It employs a mixture of life-skills training, workshops with the children's parents or guardians, community service, and mentoring by elder youths — some of them former convicts.

By far the biggest success has been Mpofu, who was referred to the programme after he was caught stealing a bicycle. Said his mother, Angeline Mpofu: “He was starting to be so naughty, so I'm lucky they arrested him.” Mpofu's class teacher, Norman Lebusha, agreed, saying Mpofu's formerly aggressive and disruptive attitude was no more. “That programme changed his lifestyle,” Lebusha said.

The teenager — an A-student who fell in with petty criminals because he was tired of being picked on because of his small stature — said the programme had changed his life so much that he wanted to help when he saw six members of his former gang in danger of becoming serious criminals.

“I saw they were falling into the same path as me, letting their lives be destroyed day by day,” he said. He said while he had lost some other former friends who had tried to lure him back into crime, he was happy with his life. “I learned to listen to my conscience,” said Mpofu.

For the community service part of their course, Mpofu and his former gang members tend the garden at the Alexandra Disabled Movement for bed-ridden children. “It's looking beautiful, and the scent of the flowers comes in the windows,” he said while surveying the garden. The seven youths have also started a soccer team.

An independent study released this week said the project had been relatively successful. I t cost only R2 250 a child for the course — R5 107 cheaper than what it would cost the taxpayer to foot the bill for the same time in jail. But, the report said, a big problem was that because there was no policing mechanism, it was difficult to ensure that children diverted to the course attended it. New Directions has a non-attendance rate of 19%.

By Michael Schmidt
27 August 2003

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