There are 737 Children’s Courts in South Africa because every Magistrate’s Court serves as a Children’s Court. Act 38 of the Children’s Act of 2005 states that a Children’s Court is mandated to provide oversight and protection of the rights of the child. The Children’s Court, therefore, plays an essential role in cases involving parental disputes, divorce, abandonment, abuse, and neglect. The magistrate’s ruling is often life-changing, whether placing the child in the custody of one or both parents, the extended family, foster parents, or a child and youth care centre. But while the Children’s Act is unambiguous in the rights it accrues to children, it doesn’t comprehensively address the harrowing experience of a child testifying in court. Nor does it adequately consider the impact of the physical surroundings of the waiting rooms and court corridors that compound the inhospitable environment, Little thought is given to the consequential trauma on the young witnesses whose lives have been wrenched apart through no fault of their own.
“It’s crucial for the child’s voice to be heard,” says Magistrate Bongi Mtwana, who works at the Wynberg Children’s Court. “That’s why this project is so dear to my heart. Children need the brightness and warmth of a room while they await, often painful, decisions affecting their lives. They come here with so much anxiety, and the books, toys, comfortable chairs, and colours calm them down. By the time they come to us, they are in a much better frame of mind, and we are able to do our work with them so much more effectively.” Human Rights crusader Advocate Sabelo Sibanda agrees, “For as long as we view our court system as an adversarial court system, we neglect the real victims of the system, which are children. We need to identify the necessity of the court as an environment that is child-friendly.”
Dec 2022 | Collective Action Magazine
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