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Friday, March 26, 2010
Showers’ toxic peril
76 DAYS TO WORLD CUP: SOUTH AFRICA’S SINISTER CLEAN-UP SQUAD
WATER supplies are in danger of being contaminated by creams, lotions and ointments washed down drains by people taking showers, a scientist warned yesterday. Chemist Dr Ilene Ruhoy said bathrooms were “portals” for pollution. It had been thought pills flushed down loos were the biggest menace. But now the shower has been pinpointed. American Ms Ruhoy said: “We need to be more aware.”
CALIFORNICATION Married Debra Tapia, 38, is facing jail after admitting a boy of 15 fathered her fourth child in Santa Ana, California.
DESPAIR . . . main picture, a girl of 13 in a police van, shown above, and a street boy sniffs glue
IT has just gone 10am and the searing South African sun is beating down, forcing city dwellers to seek shade under newly planted palm trees. Only the many teams of workmen preparing Durban for the gaze of World Cup visitors must continue their heavy toil in temperatures exceeding 30˚C. With 76 days to go before the eyes of the world fall upon this city, time is running out. Above the whirr of drills and heavyduty diggers, a different and more harrowing sound begins to emerge from behind the wire mesh covering the windows of a parked police van. On closer inspection, tiny fingers can be seen reaching out desperately through the holes, as the voices inside beg for help. “Please, please come. We will die in this heat,” a small voice pleads before collapsing into pitiful sobs. Shockingly, the van contains eight street children aged nine to 15. In the build-up to the biggest football show on earth, these helpless youngsters are being rounded up each day by police and dumped miles outside Durban in a bid to keep the city looking pristine. To an extent it is a pointless exercise, as the children simply embark on the 24-hour trek back to Durban as soon as they are dumped. To the outside world, they appear
Words
SHARON HENDRY Pictures
MARC GIDDINGS in desperate need of rehabilitation. But to Durban Municipal Police they are unsightly vermin in need of urgent removal. The Sun witnessed the police’s heavy-handed tactics first-hand, less than a day after arriving in Durban last week. Sun photographer Marc Giddings was detained and interrogated by police for more than two hours after taking pictures of children locked in the back of a van without food or water.
Debris Inside the city’s Metropolitan police station, he was shocked to discover a poster on display entitled Operation Beach Clean-Up. It blatantly revealed police tactics in the build-up to the World Cup. Street children were listed alongside vagrants and debris on a register of rubbish to be removed from the city centre. Marc was finally released after cagey officers forced him to delete pictures from his camera and threat-
ened him with further detention and deportation. Later we traced one of the girls who had been detained in the police truck. Her harrowing story reveals a different side to the sun-and-surf South Africa that its government officials would like World Cup fans to buy into. It is more in tune with official figures that show one in four South Africans are jobless and live daily on less than $1.25 — just 84p. Nobuhle Sishi is still only 15 but she has lived on the streets of Durban for two years. Her alcoholic parents Thandi and Mphakanyswa made life unbearable for her and her sisters, Slindile, 18, and 12-year-old Nokwanda, and forced her to leave home. She said: “Life was always very difficult for us because we are very poor and Mum and Dad’s drinking meant we all had to fend for ourselves and raise each other. And there was a lot of violence that we all witnessed daily. “But the hardest thing for me was when I was raped by someone in our village when I was just 13. After that I just felt I had to get away — anywhere was better than being at home.” Nobuhle sprinted away barefoot from her family home — a corrugated iron shack — and hitched 20 miles into Durban, where other street children told her to make her home in the Emagghumeri area. She said: “At first I thought it would be a better life but I
soon realised the truth. At night, I had just a small blanket to sleep under and I was regularly beaten up and abused by men.” Shockingly, Nobuhle has been raped a further five times on the streets. It is estimated that 500,000 rapes are committed annually in South Africa and 52 people are murdered every day. Nobuhle added: “Who would seriously choose a life on the streets? The only way to survive it is by sniffing pots of glue that dull every feeling. But I have seen the terrible effects it has had on my friends, crippling their joints so they can no longer walk.” Recalling the round-up witnessed by The Sun, Nobuhle said: “The police pulled up in a van and dragged us into it from across the street. “Then they beat us with
sticks and sprayed pepper in our faces until our chests felt like they were on fire. On this occasion we were driven to the police station and kept with adult criminals in the back of the van while the sun was beating down on us. “At other times, the police drive us round the city all day before taking us out to townships far away and dumping us. “Sometimes it takes us a whole night and day to walk back to the city, and then the whole round-up process begins again the next day. It has been getting more and more frequent in recent weeks.” As a temporary measure, street charity Umthombo has rescued Nobuhle and taken her back to her family home, where social workers are monitoring her progress. They say she will be safer there during the period of intense preWorld Cup police activity. But Nobuhle said: “I don’t know how long I will be able to stay. I feel unsafe here and unsafe on the streets. “All I wish for is a space in between where I can go to school. “I would like to learn computers and become a teacher so I can help other children to avoid child Nobuhle a life of misery.”
FEARS . . . ex-street back at home, and police station sign
The charity was co-founded by Tom Hewitt, who left an office job in London for a surfing holiday in Durban in 1992. He fell in love with former street child Bulelwa Ngantweni, 28, and the pair wed and set up Umthombo — Zulu for Wellspring — to offer respite to the estimated 400 children living on Durban’s streets. Tom, 38, said: “Round-ups of street children have been happening for a decade but they are intensifying during the build-up to the World Cup and causing the children great distress.
Fear “They are seen as dangerous vermin that need to be taken out of sight but they are just ordinary kids like yours and mine. “The only difference is they have come from backgrounds which most of us could only have nightmares about. “It is not just poverty which pushes them on to the streets. “Despite what the tourist brochures say, South Africa is still a country dealing with huge problems and lots of these kids are escaping violent and abusive homes. “When street life in Durban is the better alternative, you know things at home are really bad. “The boys are regularly beaten by police and robbed by older men and the girls are repeatedly raped. “They constantly sniff glue because it dulls everything — feelings of hunger, cold and fear. “But at the moment, street
children are not a crime or even a social issue for South African police — they are an image issue.” However, Martin Xaba, head of Durban’s Safer Cities Department, claims he will start working with organisations such as Umthombo to find an alternative to round-ups. He said: “Officials are engaging with existing local street child organisations in developing a strategy to address the issue of street children in Durban. “Children have rights and the city adheres to that principle.” As he was speaking, Bulelwa was looking after more than 20 street children who had dropped into the charity’s “safe space” shelter in Durban’s dangerous Point area. Here, youngsters are able to catch up on sleep, eat nutritious meals and join a range of sports and arts programmes including daily surfing lessons. Bulelwa said: “We hear shocking stories about police round-ups every day. Once a group of children were dropped in a township far from Durban and police told residents, ‘They are criminals — do whatever you want with them.’ “On another occasion, a police officer pointed a gun in the faces of a young mum and her baby. “It is such a pointless exercise. Instead of using their vehicles to drive these children around each day, why don’t they give them to us and we can drive them to the beach and to play football?” l To find out more about the charity’s work, visit umthombo.org. s.hendry@the-sun.co.uk