| Anthropologist Freelance researcherGreat Guide since 12/09 Nationality: British |
Location: Southern Africa | South Africa Themes: society | anthropology | |
DURBAN’S STREET CHILDREN ARE SWEPT UP IN FIFA 2010 FEVER
Children at the Umthombo Youth Centre in Durban
Having lived and worked amongst Nepal’s so-called street children for many years my antenna are tuned to the complexities associated with young people’s decisions to live rough. We were barely 48 hours in Durban, but I could not pass by the opportunity to visit Umthombo, a centre known for taking a different approach to ‘the problem’ of street children.
Umthombo is situated at the Point, a busy and dangerous downtown area. A news reporter visiting that same morning was mugged on route. I was welcomed warmly by Ciki, a young staff-member, and half a dozen boys chatting avidly about up-coming soccer matches. Umthombo, I was soon to learn, has initiated the Street Child World Cup, an international competition to be played a month prior to the FIFA Soccer tournament that is consuming much of the nation’s imagination and budget. Over the next few hours I was to learn that the Street Child World Cup is a clever response to a knotty set of obstacles to young people’s well-being while living on the streets, as well as to the feasibility of their re-integration into families and schools.
Many of the obstacles street children face are the all too familiar consequences of unemployment, poverty and social inequality that weaken nets of community support to the extent that some children slip through. Relationships between street-living children and their families are fractured, or at best fragile. The combination of difficulties at home, and humiliation or violence on the street, quickly undermines children’s self-esteem. Passers-by regard street children as a nuisance or assume they are criminals. Perhaps their unwillingness to ask questions results from a kind of psychological paralysis: Seeing children on the street is a stark reminder that all is not well in South African society.
Umthombo’s team of social workers, most of whom are former street children, understand these issues well and have developed a step-by-step approach to enabling children to return to their communities and to school. Trusting relationships are established with social workers through a daily programme of art, soccer, surfing and skate-boarding. Many children practice diligently and are highly skilled. When ready, children receive educational input and psycho-social support. A social worker accompanies them home to discuss steps towards returning, and options for school.
But the mountain children must climb to achieve these aims has just become steeper and even less predictable. Umthombo’s co-founder and director, Tom Hewitt, described a more recent threat to the children’s safety and to the carefully crafted therapeutic and advocacy programmes put in place by the Umthombo team. Durban’s Metro police have been carrying out highly-organised ‘round-up’ campaigns because politicians want to create a good impression to those visiting the city. The pressure mounts at the prospect of tens of thousands of international soccer players and fans arriving in just four months. Citing bylaws that ban ‘loitering’ on the streets, police round up children load them into trucks and drive to the outskirts of the city. There children are either dumped or placed in ‘centres’ with adults, something that is illegal in South Africa.
Umthombo is working with journalists, as well as senior politicians within and outside South Africa in an effort to expose the inhumanity and injustice of the police round-ups. Detailed articles (with photographic evidence) have appeared in national and international newspapers, and pressure is being exerted on those driving the action.
In this climate, the Street Children’s World Cup is especially strategic. First the training and preparatory matches against local schools serve on-going needs, namely to bolster children’s belief in themselves and the benefits of being at school. Second, the event’s international status – including an endorsement by the British P.M. John Brown, David Beckham, and others – puts the spotlight on efforts to acknowledge and support Durban’s street children. It is becoming more and more difficult for those who prefer to use violence against children, and to avoid the real issues, to persist undetected. Street ‘round-ups’ should soon be a thing of the past. And thanks to Umthombo, there is a good chance that some of Durban’s most marginalised young people will see new possibilities in the next six months – perhaps just one of the spin-offs from the fever surrounding FIFA 2010 that I had never foreseen.
For more:www.umthombo.org and www.streetchildworldcup.org
Author: Rachel Bray
Date: 01 Mar 2010
Location: Southern Africa | South Africa
Themes: society, skills and interests | crime, sport, social development
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