ALBERTON – The food arrives and you go to call the little ones but they are just not there. You call, you search and panic sets in as you frantically run around trying to locate them.
Imagine the horror of your child being taken. The absolute helplessness that you would feel. This is happening around our country on a daily basis. It has been reported that about 100 000 people get trafficked in South Africa every year. Allegedly 30 000 children are brought into the country for use in the sex trade and forced labour. South Africa ranks in the top ten countries in the world when it comes too human trafficking, an honour I am sure we could do without.
There has been much hullabaloo about the Home Affairs travel document position, forcing parents to have an unabridged birth certificate when travelling with their kids. But given the above stats, it seems as if this is their attempt to try and curb this abhorrent practice.
I feel that perhaps not enough is being done about this, especially when it comes to information and education over the dangers and processes that surround this issue. I am a father of two girls and cannot imagine what I would do if they had to go missing. Where do you even start looking or getting help? In my mind I would be like Liam Neeson in the movie Taken, where he taunts his daughter’s kidnappers with a diatribe of how he has a certain skill set that will enable him to find them and kill them. But this isn’t a movie and I’m not Liam Neeson. The truth is, I am unprepared for an eventuality such as this. I have taught my girls stranger danger but it isn’t enough.
I have decided to create a missing pack for my kids, consisting of a recent photo, blood type, description, contact numbers and some strands of hair for DNA analyses. Now I know that may seem extreme, but in a world of extremists – I would rather be prepared. It is a sad though, that my once carefree life has been turned into a paranoid existence where I don’t feel like I can let my eldest walk to the shops on her own, and I watch my youngest like a hawk. My only hope lies in community, because the solution must come from it. We have to watch out for each other, help each other because the big bad wolf is out there and he is hungry.
Read more here:
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