There is a darkness in South Africa that we are not ready to confront — a darkness that haunts the playgrounds, creeps into schoolyards, and festers in homes.
That darkness is child sexual violence. We are not only failing our children — we are burying them while calling ourselves a democratic society. The number of young children who are raped, trafficked, filmed, and killed in this country is not just alarming; it is apocalyptic.
We are standing in the ruins of our humanity, and somehow, we’re carrying on as though nothing is wrong.
Just days ago, the country was shaken by the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in the North West. Before that, we were reeling from the arrests of a mother and father in Bloemhof, accused of using their own children to produce child pornography.
The horror is relentless. Each case blends into the next because there is no accountability. These children are not just statistics. They were alive. They had favorite cartoons and tiny backpacks. Now they are gone, and their stories vanish from the headlines faster than they’re buried.
We must ask ourselves why these atrocities keep happening. The answer is chilling: because predators know they can. Because the justice system is too slow. Because police officers laugh in the faces of desperate mothers. Because court dates are postponed ten times. Because communities protect the abuser instead of the child. Because the Department of Social Development is more concerned with bureaucracy than with urgent protection. Because, at its core, South Africa does not treat children — especially poor, Black, rural children — as people worth protecting.
The trafficking of children is growing. Children are being moved across provinces and borders. Some are lured through promises of education. Others are simply stolen. There is a syndicate operating beneath our noses, feeding a market of international demand for child abuse content.
When we at The Great People of South Africa were invited to speak on Newzroom Afrika about a case involving international child pornography and collaboration with the FBI, we saw firsthand how law enforcement abroad seems more invested than some local agencies. How can that be? How can an American institution treat our children with more urgency than our own?
What is more disturbing is how spiritual practices, cultural norms, and even churches are sometimes used to silence victims. People accuse survivors of lying, of inviting abuse, of tarnishing family names. And when the perpetrators are family — as they often are — there is a wall of protection built around them.
Victims are told not to speak. Cases are never opened. Children are blamed for their own trauma. We are grooming another generation of silence, shame, and secrecy.
South Africa is good at slogans. We are good at awareness days, brightly colored t-shirts, and powerful hashtags. But we are not good at protecting children. We are not good at ensuring that courtrooms work, that dockets are followed up, that trauma counseling is available, that safe houses are funded. We are not good at saving lives. We need to stop pretending that we are.
There is no greater moral failure than the one we are committing right now. Children are dying. Not metaphorically. Not in theory. They are literally dying — raped, killed, or permanently destroyed by the weight of their trauma. The question is, how many more bodies need to pile up before we admit that this country is not safe for children? That this country has declared war on its most vulnerable?
This blog is not just grief. It is fury. It is a call to action. It is a cry on behalf of the voiceless, the buried, and the broken. South Africa must rise. We must rise in the classrooms. We must rise in the courtrooms. We must rise in our homes.
If we don’t, history will remember us not as survivors of apartheid — but as the generation who let the children die under democracy.
