Laws set out at Home Affairs expose women!

In 2011 I accompanied a student, a young girl I was in class with to Home Affairs Offices. She had gone there to apply for a study permit or temporary citizenship, initially she was from Swaziland and was staying with her uncle who was working in South Africa. We got to the offices, enquired and we were directed where to go. When we got to the particular desk, her enquiry was met with a definite No, the requirements were to stringent for her, and we were told that, other conditions that could guarantee a person citizenship where either marriage to a local or having a child with a local person and that automatically qualifies one to have a chance to apply for citizenship as a South African.

I looked around the large holding room of Home Affairs Offices, and I met a large number of women with babies in their arms. I was surpised, we then left and went our separate ways. I told this to one of my friends and her response was, come to the SASSA offices on pay day, to see the queues of young girls who are there to collect child support Grant and you will be amazed. She said to me, "it ain't nothing what you saw at home affairs, wait till you get to the Pay Points." And she also told me not ot go to Absa Bank if I have an account there, she said I should only go after the 4th in the month.

In truth, there are so many young girls who have children with foreign men and are left holding fatherless babies in their arms. Once the father get's an ID document, most vanish into thin air in your own Country, intraceable even for child maintanance and then these girls end up in queues for State Subsdised Child Grants, they are even encouraged to go and register for these grants. Which make me ask myself, "how stupid are these girls, why are they throwing their lives away, when there are so many opportunities out there, waiting for them to come and grab them and put them to good use?"

It is these rules or laws that we need to step up the fight against and raise our voices against. They are causing exploitation against women and girls. Some women have turned their childrens lives miserable, by being married to foreigners and exposing their children to emotional abuse and neglect and they themselves end up being victims. So many young women struggle to get married, as when they get to Home Affairs, some find that they have been fraudulently been married off to complete strangers. Some women and young girls do this willingly, for promises of regular monthly payment for life, that fizzles of a few months down the line and the donor.....vanished.

Let's work hard in building self esteem in women and young girls alike, not to sell their souls nor compromise thwir freedom, future and education by being duped by so called "Love" and promises of a "better" life. Nothing comes for free, earn your own money, advance your own future, girls should get out there and be educated and employed, after that the sky is the limit.

Angry and concerned

Loretta.