Child drug slaves

By Naquita Hendricks
STRONG, direct evidence has emerged of why Observatory residents must not give money or food to the children begging at local traffic lights and shops.
ObsLife has captured on camera images of regular local child beggars smoking drugs in the Groote Schuur graveyard with the adults who exploit them.
An investigation by ObsLife revealed that Observatory is “home” to a group of about eight children aged between eight and thirteen, many of whom come from Valhalla Park. They are being exploited by a number of adults who give them drugs in return for the money they get begging at the Main Road intersections with Station and Anzio Road, among other places.
Interviews with social workers and street people indicate that the number of children in the loose grouping occasionally rises as children from mainly Khayelitsha and Philippi pass through Observatory. They are mainly boys, but sometimes they are joined by two small girls.
Kenneth Roman, the Observatory Improvement District’s field worker for the homeless, says the drug-addicted adults who exploit them include a mother whose children were previously removed from her care after she burnt the hand of her 12-year-old daughter. Kenneth said he did not know how she managed to regain custody of her children. The heroin addict currently uses her children and two grandchildren to beg for her.
The activities of the children observed by ObsLife were confirmed by local street people as typical of their daily movements.
On one occasion, ObsLife observed two boys who were begging at the Anzio Road traffic lights jump the fence into the Groote Schuur graveyard.
The boys walked towards a woman

who had a little girl in her arms, and a man. They huddled and were seen smoking what is believed to be unga, a heroin derivative. The children smoked openly, while the adults covered their heads with jackets as they smoked.
 After a while, the boys emerged from the graveyard and started begging again, this time in the St Peter’s Square parking lot.
Kenneth explains that the children come from extremely depraved backgrounds. Many have run away from home to escape abuse. To illustrate the extent of parental neglect they suffer, Kenneth tells of how he recently took a young boy back to his home in Valhalla Park after he was caught grabbing money from people at the Standard Bank ATM in Station Road.
Kenneth was greeting at the door of the boy’s home by the mother, who blew out a puff of Mandrax-and-dagga smoke and asked: "What did he do this time?"
Despite his attempts to get social workers involved in the case, Kenneth says the boy was back on the streets of Observatory after a week.
Apart from the grouping from Valhalla Park, social workers are also aware of an alcoholic mother who regularly begs in Observatory with a small boy and girl. She claims to have come from Groote Schuur Hospital and needed money to get home.