The Independent Democrats is particularly concerned with this issue and we are in fact one of the only parties to have developed a specific women and child abuse policy. In it, ID argues that arresting this problem starts within the family unit. We need to prevent the breakdown of families, by alleviating the conditions of grinding poverty and unemployment. Men in particular, need to be given other avenues through which to deal with their feelings of disempowerment, so as to prevent them from seeking to gain power through the abuse of women and children. Through my interactions with many of the street children in Cape Town I have come to learn that many of them are there because they are fleeing an intolerable home situation. It is not enough to simply make pronouncements that there will be no more street children, until we give real support to our families and communities that are being torn apart by poverty and abuse. There is not nearly enough social workers to deal with these problems and often the issue is dumped on safety and security, who in many cases are not adequately sensitized to these issues. ID is also extremely concerned about juveniles in detention, who it is discovered are often kept in horrendous conditions in violation of their basic human rights. The example of the Westville Juvenile Centre is a case in point where children are languishing behind bars for up to two years before their cases come to court because their parents cannot afford bail. Unfortunately the lessons these children learn behind bars are not the lessons most children are learning in school.

We urgently need to put the interests and rights of children first in this country. I believe many communities do want to protect their children, and we have seen that in the way families have taken in large numbers of children who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. We as government, however, need to do far more to support these caring communities through providing them with the resources and support services they urgently require.