South African Debate:
Welfare bodies in the dark about street children

City 'must explain policy'

The municipality was not serious about dealing with more than 1 000 street children who lived in Durban, non-governmental organisations charged yesterday, amid complaints that the city's approach to street children was at odds with a much-vaunted policy.
Yesterday two independent organisations: YFC KZN and Streetwise questioned why they had not seen the city's policy on street children, a document that was apparently compiled after lengthy research by the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
They also asked why Visvin Reddy, a former councillor appointed as a R40 000-a-month consultant on street children, did not host regular stakeholder forums with organisations dealing with street children.

Streetwise Deputy Director Busi Shabalala said: “I'm not sure if we are going forwards or backwards on this issue, but something needs to be done. These are children, not old boots that you take off and throw away.”
Shabalala said a street children's alliance, formed last year, held monthly meetings attended by about 15 non-governmental organisations working with street children. She said neither Reddy nor any city official attended the meetings.
Her concerns were echoed by YFC KZN's Director for Homeless children, Robyn Hemmens, who said that stakeholders had met at UKZN last year to discuss aspects of the city's policy on street children.
“We were not given a policy document, but I think either a PhD or masters student invested a lot of time in it. At the meeting we discussed at length that you can't have institutions to hold children, nor can you forcibly take children off the street.”
But, she said, the city was doing exactly that at the moment: rounding up children and taking them to a shelter in Inanda.

Shabalala said: “We have asked the university to give us the policy, but they said we must ask the city.”
Hemmens said any policy had to be widely communicated and have a set of key action points that involved stakeholders.
“We also have to know whether there is accountability over the implementation of the policy.
“At a meeting held with the city last year, we as service providers complained about the city's approach of establishing big shelters . . . but they went ahead and opened one in Ottawa, that closed, and now another at Inanda. We feel the city consults but then goes ahead and does its own thing. Then it wants to use our staff as fieldworkers.
“We're happy to work together, but they can't dictate the model,” said Hemmens.
Both Hemmens and Shabalala said they did not want to questions Reddy's integrity, but he was regarded as central to dealing with the issue of street children, and they questioned his lack of qualifications and experience in the field.

Repeated attempts by The Mercury to get comment from Reddy failed.

He was awarded the contract after he defected from the Democratic Alliance to the ANC in a highly publicised pre-election publicity stunt last year.
Yesterday, City Manager Michael Sutcliffe said Reddy was but one of many council employees dealing with street children.
He did not elaborate on Reddy's month-to-month contract, but said: “We fail to understand the preoccupation with Mr Reddy in respect of this programme and the lack of focus on other council employees who play a significant role.”
DA council caucus leader Lyn Ploos van Amstel said the furore around the “annual cleaning up” of the streets ahead of the tourism Indaba had brought into focus the challenge of managing the apparently growing problem of children and young adults living on the streets.
“The matter is dogged by the ongoing and as yet unresolved controversy over the extremely well-paid role as 'Consultant to the Municipal Manager' on this issue assigned to Visvin Reddy,” she said.

Reports of street children's involvement in begging, petty crime and other types of nuisance suggested “that all efforts to manage the problem, however well-intended, are having little impact”.
Bhekinkosi Buthelezi, the ANC council caucus leader, promised that ANC councillors would give organisations an audience if they requested one.
Sutcliffe said: “Even though social welfare is not a direct city responsibility . . . the council has put in place a well thought through, pro-active strategy to get vulnerable children off the streets and into care. All elements are not yet in place, but over the next few months we hope to have everything working properly.”
According to YFC KZN, a state census last year estimated there were 6 000 street children in the greater Durban area. The city puts the figure at 1 500.
Sutcliffe said the city had a budget of R2.5 million to deal with street children.

Greg Ardé
26 May 2005

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