FAMILIES OF STREET CHILDREN IN THE TRANSKEI: A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

In South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, there is a paucity of literature on families of street children. A recent literature search (on the internet and in other resources) reveals that reasons for this state of affairs are many, some of the main ones being: The tendency on the part of researchers to investigate the “obvious”, in this case the children roaming the streets, instead of viewing the phenomenon in depth, i.e. taking cognisance of the root causes of the problem. Thus, resources that seek to investigate the phenomenon are likely to be misdirected towards addressing the problem after it has occurred, rather than examining its causes. Also, focusing on the phenomenon of street children negates the fact that a child is part of a family and thus can never be rehabilitated in isolation from his family, hence this study to determine the “character” of families of street children. The difficulty researchers have in locating families of these children since the children have de-bonded from their families for a variety of reasons, some of which are: family disorganisation, poverty at home, school-related problems, a breakdown of social networks in the community as well as disillusionment with the existing societal values, hope for an alternative glamorous life-style, to mention just a few (http://web24.epnet.com/citation, 2006; Kuse, 2001). In the Transkei, where this study was conducted, families were “traced” through links with the extended kin who had sheltered the street children after leaving their biological families to fend for themselves. In the present study, the researcher seeks to determine the characteristics of these families with a view to understanding the environment from which the street children come.