Across South Africa, Christmas trees at child and youth care centres (which, despite the vanilla name, range from nurturing home-based care to old-school institutions reminiscent of Oliver Twist or Annie), are bulging with presents for children in care.
But strict confidentiality laws mean we are seldom able to find out who these children are, or why they are in care.
Conventional wisdom says they are orphans (after all, we have 3 million of those); and many are. But Unicef (the UN children’s organisation) has indicated almost 60 percent of children in care are the vulnerable children listed on Part A of South Africa’s Child Protection Register (a register that, while incomplete, already includes 34 500 children either abandoned, neglected or removed from their families due to abuse). Today we get to meet five of these children – perhaps one of them received a Christmas gift from you.
We find Themba* in the garden at his child and youth care centre. A shy and sweet child, he is happiest outdoors, so the football he was given as a Christmas gift is the best present possible. Themba is an orphan, but not a stereotypical one – his father is still alive. Instead, he is one of more than half a million maternal orphans in South Africa who are so classified because Unicef considers them to be particularly vulnerable. He can’t remember his mother; she died when he was six months old. He also can’t remember a time before the home.
His father brought him here just after his mother died. The last thing his father did was sign consent for Themba to be adopted. He has not seen him since, or any other members of the family. At first, there was talk of adoption. His social worker must have looked for a while. But as he grew older, his file sunk deeper and deeper into a pile of open cases. Eventually, she probably filed it away, believing (not without evidence) that an HIV-positive boy over the age of three would never find a family.
This will be his 10th Christmas in the home. Although a “lifer” in the institution, he isn’t neglected. The caregivers are strict, but kind, although overworked and under-resourced. As one of the oldest of 45 children in their care, he worked out quickly that the younger, more demanding children got the most attention. It is why he spends his days outside.
It is supper time and the children pile indoors. Themba carefully places his treasured football on a makeshift shelf at the end of his bed. After bedtime prayers, we ask what he wants for Christmas. He smiles – all he wants is a sunny day so he can play with his ball and that the little ones won’t pop it (at least, not yet).
If he ever thought about a family, he doesn’t any more.
Across the country, little Sindisiwe* lies on a baby dinghy and kicks her legs. Already seven months old, she is a warm and affectionate child who loves to be held, and is adored by her caregivers. Her happy demeanour belies the tragic start she had to life. As the head of her nursery cuddles her and places her gently in her cot next to the crocheted Teddy bear she was given for Christmas, she tells me how Sindi was abandoned in an open field in late autumn, and how hard she fought to stay alive.
But she did; mercifully wrapped in a blanket, she was found quickly, before hypothermia had a chance to set in. When she was strong enough, she was placed in temporary safe care while her social worker tried to find her family. The search proved futile, opening the door to adoption. Yet she is spending her first Christmas in care.
The reason, says her formidable social worker, is shocking. When they went to register her birth, the Department of Home Affairs – for reasons that are still not clear – decided she was foreign. Instead of issuing her with an unabridged birth certificate, she was given a hand-written one without an ID number. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad – “foreign” children have been adopted in South Africa in the past.
But, this year the Department of Home Affairs issued an instruction that the Department of Social Development may under no circumstances approve the adoption of a child without proper documentation.
The fact that Sindisiwe was unilaterally declared to be foreign is of no consequence. Her social worker is perplexed and angry. Without adoption as an option, the department normally suggests that such children be repatriated to their “country of origin”. But since no one has found a link to any family, that is impossible.
Equally, without an ID she cannot receive grants, go to school or even receive state-sponsored medical care. Unless the Department of Home Affairs corrects its error, not only will Sindisiwe grow up in an institution, she will also be stateless.
Far away, in a rudimentary children’s home in a huge dusty township, Lulama* lies patiently in her metal cot waiting for her caregiver to arrive. Too young to share in the Christmas sweets that were given to the other children in this large and desperately poor home, she did not get a gift on this, her first Christmas.
She saw them though, the colourful sweeties which the 11 other children sharing her room came to show her, and which made her face light up. Like them, her skin is grey and flaky from lack of moisture, and her nose is runny. But she has bright eyes, a huge and ready smile, and a quiet, assured intelligence.
She is already showing signs of insecure attachment, though, and like the other 33 children in the home is eager for affection from any visitor. The social worker says that Lulama should already have been in a family. Her mother has signed consent for her to be adopted, and her father failed to respond to notifications.
But her birth mother missed the 30-day cut-off for the registration of Lulama’s birth. Her application is being treated as a late birth registration and she is one of a growing backlog of cases awaiting processing.
More than eight months later, she is still waiting for Home Affairs to issue her with her birth certificate. It is the only thing standing between her and adoption.
Her social worker is hopeful. But she worries about the damage being done in the interim as Lulama spends more of her crucial first 1 000 days in care. She also worries about how securely she will attach when she is finally placed.
As her social worker leaves, Lulama starts to cry, her sweet face creasing in distress. Then she is once again distracted by her loud roommates.
Back inland, the quiet of the afternoon is broken by a loud “BEE-BAW” and a flurry of giggles as Sipho* threads his Christmas fire truck through a crowd of toddlers on his way to “put out a fire”. At two and a half (the half being very important to him), he is one of the big boys at his place of safety, and takes his role as big brother seriously.
A favourite since he arrived in the nursery at seven months old, Sipho is a ray of sunshine whose smile lights up the room. Since then, social workers have been trying to reunite him with his birth mother who drove over 800km to place him in care.
She is resistant, but also unwilling to see him placed in foster care. Over the years she has consistently said that she doesn’t want him, but has missed every appointment set for her to consent to his adoption.
The nursery manager is frustrated. “First prize is that he grows up with his mother,” she says, “but, if she doesn’t want to raise him, we could place him tomorrow. All we need is for her to sign consent.”
The big fear is that Sipho will age out of the nurturing home in which he now lives. There is even talk about them raising their upper age limit to four so they can accommodate children like him who are “stuck” in care. They are also fund-raising to build a second home for older kids. But the contingency route will always be Plan B; they are desperate for this delightful, clever boy to have a family.
In a much quieter part of the nursery, away from the busy babies and toddlers, lies the tiniest of our children. Zanele* is three months old, but today could have been her birthday. She was born 11 weeks early when her mother took pills to abort her. Horrified when little Zanele (who was only 1.1kg) was born alive, she took her to hospital where the child was admitted to ICU after suffering an intra-ventricular haemorrhage. Her mother was adamant that she didn’t want Zanele, and she specifically didn’t want the father of Zanele’s brothers and sisters to know about her. She disappeared shortly after Zanele was placed in care at the age of six weeks. No one knows her whereabouts and she has not signed consent for Zanele to be adopted.
A caregiver walks into the special care unit where Zanele spends her days. She takes a moment to check whether the child is asleep, lulled by the soft music piped through the room all day. Zanele’s eyes are open. The caregiver carefully picks her up and places her in a kangaroo pouch, close to her skin, and covers her with the soft blanket she was given for Christmas.
She isn’t their first premature baby, nor their first aborted one, so they know exactly what to do. But, despite the constant care, it is too soon to tell the extent of the damage from her premature birth (and how it occurred).
In the next few months, they will assess her eyes and ears and take a cranial sonar. And, like all their premature babies born under 1.6kg, she will be assessed by an occupational therapist at six months. They will also monitor her for cerebral palsy, a common complication in aborted babies.
Seeing my face when she mentions cerebral palsy, the nursery manager is quick to comfort me: “It is heartbreaking, but there are families for these children, especially overseas.”
As we watch Zanele inside the pouch, we are both struck that she survived. Regardless of what happens next, she is already more fortunate than many others.
Administrative delays, resistance to family reunification on the part of our children’s families, parents absconding without signing consent for an adoption, and the intransigence and xenophobic policies of Home Affairs mean many of these children are destined for another year in care.
But this is Christmas, so it seems fitting that at least one of these stories ends happily. To our surprise (we had no idea when we chose their stories), two of our children have experienced their own Christmas miracles. Sindi’s social worker succeeded in motivating Home Affairs to reissue her birth certificate. While children born in South Africa with one or more foreign parent may remain in limbo indefinitely, she now has a valid birth certificate and ID number. Next year, she will be adopted.
And, for our oldest child, there was something even more special in store. The day after Themba’s 10th birthday, he received an unexpected visit from his long-lost social worker.
She took him on one side and told him gently that a social worker from another city had found him a family: a mommy and daddy who are desperate for him to be their son, and a brother and sister who can’t wait to meet him.
She showed him pictures and watched the breathless moment as he tried to take in the news. She explained that because he was a big boy of 10 now, he could decide if he wanted to be adopted.
His fierce nodding and the expression of joy stopped her mid-sentence, in the middle of explaining that it would still take a while, but soon, he would have a family. A smile creasing her tired face, his social worker left him practising his signature so that he could sign the consent forms.
For thousands of children in care, 2016 will be a year best forgotten, a year of stress and hardship, a year of pain. But this Christmas, one little boy is receiving the best gift imaginable: a family. Next year, Themba (whose name fittingly means “full of faith and hope”) will no longer be an orphan, he will be a son.
Details obscured to protect the children’s identities. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on the Daily Maverick.