Cape Town – Child rights organisation Save our Children has launched an online petition calling on Police Minister Bheki Cele to make the National Registrar for Sex Offenders (NSRO) public.
The NSRO is not available to the general public, only to those who employ people who work with children or disabled people.
The list helps with protection by ensuring the names of sex offenders are registered in order to prevent them from working with children and the disabled.
Director of social services at Tutela, a community- based non-profit organisation with a group of autonomous organisations, including Save our Children, Nicolette Myburgh said the information could prove viable for many South Africans, especially since cases of sexual offences were so high.
The organisation launched another online petition asking for the registry to be made public.
Myburgh said you could use the Protection of Information Act to access the information, adding there was a bit of process involved in it.
“Children in South Africa are at risk and if a person doesn't disclose (their status), you will never know if they are a sex offender.
"We are looking at the petition and seeing how it goes.”
She said that generally there was a good reception to the petition, with many people throwing their weight behind it.
Myburgh said Save our Children wanted harsher sentencing for sexual offenders.
“We work with survivors and it is really bad. We recently had a lady of 70 that disclosed for the first time in her life of abuse she had suffered. She was very traumatised.”
Cele’s spokesperson, Reneilwe Serero, said they had not received such a petition.