Francesca Villette
IN A scathing judgment handed down in the Western Cape High Court, Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe said a decision by the provincial government to place vulnerable children in institutions with those awaiting trial amounted to a flagrant disregard for the constitution and infringed on children’s rights to security and freedom from violence.
In June, the Justice Alliance of SA (Jasa) applied to the court to reverse a decision by the province to close four Western Cape child and youth-care centres which housed about 134 children.
Three of the centres – Die Bult Centre in the central Karoo, Ottery Youth Care and Education Centre and the Wellington Youth Centre – were established as schools of industries, and Eureka Centre in the Cape Winelands was a reform school. The Ottery Youth Care and Education Centre, though, had been granted provisional registration and still operated as a youth centre for about 70 children.
John Smyth, executive director of Jasa, said the vulnerable children were housed in centres which catered for sentenced or awaiting-trial children. Jasa, along with the governing body of the Ottery Youth Care and Education Centre, took the provincial departments of Social Development and Education, the national Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, and the respective MECs and minister to court to have the decision reversed.
Judgment read that in December 2000, the provincial government closed all former schools of industries and reform schools in the province but retained the four centres by re-establishing them as public schools. In 2013 it embarked on a process of closures or repurposing of the centres to utilise them as schools for children with special needs.
Judge Salie-Hlophe said correctional facilities were known to have a culture of induction into gangs by use of force, violence and duress as well as riotous behaviour. “Placing children in need of care in that environment amounts, in my view, to an infringement of their constitutional right to security and freedom from violence. Placing such children with those whom had transgressed the law results in… arguably a form of detention without trial.”
The respondents submitted that the children would be cared for and housed separately, but Judge Salie-Hlophe found that the provincial Department of Social Development should consider a fresh placement of children it placed in institutions, that it should be responsible for the upkeep of the centres and that each child and centre be properly resourced, co-ordinated and managed in compliance with its obligations in terms of the Children’s Act.
The judge has given the Minister of Social Development six months to present the high court with a national strategy that will ensure that there are enough centres for children and that they cover the required range of care.
Social Development MEC Albert Fritz has four months, after the national strategy has been presented, to present the high court with a strategy in line with the national one. Fritz’s spokesperson Sihle Ngobese said the provincial government, through its lawyers, was studying the judgment. “Further steps will be taken upon receipt of their advice.”
Provincial Justice head Hishaam Mohamed said the more facilities there were for children in need, the more departments could comply with the Children’s Act.
The principal of the Ottery Youth Care and Education Centre, Mo Mahadick, could not be reached for comment yesterday.