On the morning of June 16th,1976 thousands of African school children took to the streets in Soweto, South Africa to protest the inferior quality of their education and to demand their right to be taught in their own language instead of Afrikaans,recently introduced as the language of instruction in their schools
Hundreds of young boys
and girls were shot down and in the two weeks of protest that ensued, more than a hundred people were
killed and more than a thousand were injured.
To honour the memory of
those killed and the courage of all those who marched, the Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16th June every year since 1991, when it
was first initiated by the Organization
of African Unity. The Day also draws attention to the lives of African children today.
The International Day of the African Child was celebrated yesterday,with the theme this year of “All together for urgent action in
favour of street children”
Any one who has been to Kenya has no doubt encountered them on the streets of any major urban center. We call them “chokoras” here, rummagers,they have been known to desperately rummage through garbage in search of edibles.Dirty,smelly,unruly, glue sniffing boys and girls begging for, and getting the occasional handout. More likely to be ignored. An appalling,irritating presence. A scourge.
In the hope filled, optimistic heady days after the Kibaki Administration was elected into office in 2003 and declared universal free primary education, the ministry of Home Affairs under then minister,and later Vice President Moody Awori,set out to combat the problem with gusto.
Hordes of street kids were hauled into National Youth Services trucks and taken to rehabilitation centres. Truckload upon truckload arrived at NYS centers where perhaps for the first time in they lives they were assured of a decent meal and bath everyday.
Many gains were made in rehabilitating them. I know of one bright former street child
who is currently a college student in Boston.
The streets were clear of these god forsaken children. For a while.
Then they started trickling back into the streets. Some no doubt deserters of the rehabilitation system that had somehow over the years lost steam. Others new recruits of the streets, children driven by the harsh realities of life to a perilous unguided existence.
Others victims of a recent diabolical enterprise; dastardly self seeking, materialistic adults who send out these children to beg and live off their misery.
So what drives these children to the streets? Agnès Kabore Ouattara, Chairperson
of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child,has pointed out that the issue of children working and
living on the streets in African towns and cities is only the visible face of large-scale violations of rights.
It is a consequence of socio-
economic factors such as poverty, demographic explosion, rural-urban migration, political crises, as well as inter-personal problems such as violence and rejection at home in
dysfunctional families.
According to Unicef approximately 50 million children have lost one or both parents in Africa, almost a third them due to AIDS. Some are forced to grow up on their own, with limited or no support from adult caretakers.
Often when faced with the plight of these children,Kenyans ask, but what of their parents and relatives,aren’t they the ones to blame. Yes. And no. A child is a child is a child. No child should suffer for the mistakes of their parents or any adult.
African society of old recognized, in it’s characteristic wisdom , that children were the future of any society. Great care was taken to nurture children, pass on life skills and teach them a trade. The orphaned were often taken in by their extended families. In my community it was a taboo and considered a curse on any family to abandon a child of their bloodline. Barrenness would visit the clan of the child for generations all were cautioned.
In the olden days it would be unthinkable that a child would be left all alone, abandoned ,unsafe,at the mercy of a callous world.
That we let innocent children roam the streets without sparing a thought for them is a harsh indictment on the sort of society Africa has degenerated into.
It’s a moving story, which deserves to be told. Thanks for sharing.
Over copying of a dysfunctional system of living by Africans. We blindly copy everything from the so called west like apes, abandoning long held traditional values like Ubuntu in favor of “me, I and myself” that’s often the characteristic of western societies.
Throw in the insatiable greed and groundbreaking incompetence of the thieves, you know, those you guys call politicians and bam! you have bazillions of street kids! Million $ question : can we ever reverse the tide?