Several events during the past few months have highlighted the extraordinary vulnerability of the children of South Africa. These include the sentencing of taxi driver Jacob Humphrey, who failed to stop at the Buttskop level crossing in Blackheath while driving children to school, killing ten of them^[2]; the Knysna bus disaster last August, in which 15 children drowned^[3]; the starvation of four children from the same family in the informal settlement of Verdwaal^[4]; the chaining of a child to a bed in an informal settlement in Mitchell’s Plain^[5]; the long distances and difficult terrain, including the traversing of rivers, covered by children on the way to school; and the endemic violence and substance abuse experienced in many communities. In these and many other ways, our hildren experience multiple vulnerabilities. This riefing paper considers some of them.

Report by the SACBC Parliamentary Liaison Office