VATSONGA PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

Lisenga Simbine,Liana Le Roux

doi:10.15270/57-4-971

Abstract

This article is based on the findings of a qualitative study that explored the Vatsonga people’s perceptions of children’s rights to protection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 community-based participants and 11child protection social workers who were familiar with the Vatsonga people's cultural heritage. Key informant and snowball sampling techniques were employed to select the community-based participants and availability sampling for selecting the social work participants. The study established that the Vatsonga people recognise the provision, protection and participation rights of children. Child participation is perceived as comprised of childhood responsibilities, not the right to be heard perse. The paper argues that some of the purported violations of child rights in Africa emanate from the universal application of a Eurocentric worldview of children’s rights. We conclude that to understand child rights in Africa, African people should be allowed to contribute to the construction of an indigenised and contextualised perspective on child rights.

Highlights

AND BACKGROUND This article explores the Vatsonga people’s construction of children’s protection rights
An instrumental case study was a relevant research design to enable the researcher to gain insight into a complex issue, namely children’s protection rights, by exploring the context and practices of the Vatsonga people to facilitate an understanding of the use of their indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in child protection (Fouché&Schurink, 2011; Nieuwenhuis, 2016)
We present and discuss four sub-themes that emerged from the research findings that relate to the Vatsonga people’s perceptions of children’s rights, namely children’s rights to basic care, their rights to education, rights against harm and corporal punishment, and views on the right to child participation

Summary

Introduction

AND BACKGROUND This article explores the Vatsonga people’s construction of children’s protection rights. Children’s rights are recognised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (United Nations, 1989) In Africa, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) is -the regional document to contextualise child rights in the continent’s richly diverse cultures by the inclusion of uniquely African issues such as harmful cultural practices (African Union, 1990; Kaime, 2007). Nyarko (2018) elaborates on the inadequacies of the CRC in dealing with the perceived uniquely African problems of child soldiers and some harmful cultural practices, amongst others, but the African cultural heritage led to the adoption of the ACRWC. More than 25 years after the adoption of the ACRCW, its effectiveness is still to be determined as there is limited data available on the subject

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Conclusion