‘We want our children back’

Social workers are holding them – mothers

MOTHERS who have lost contact with their children after they were removed from their carer two weeks ago want to know where they are and want them back.

The mothers have had no contact with their children since they were removed.

The removal was sparked by the father of one of the children, a teenager, who allegedly sent a photograph of herself chained to a bed at a Worcester farm child shelter.

The father, from Joe Slovo, alerted the police, who raided the farm on January 26 and removed 12 children from their carer, Galinda Nelson, to places of safety.

They range between the ages of 2 and 16 and included Nelson’s 15-yearold biological daughter and adopted 13-year-old son.

The children in Nelson’s care were sent to her by desperate parents or relatives wanting a better life for their children. In some cases parents are incapable of raising their kids. They are not Nelson’s legal foster children and had regular contact with their parents and home visits.

Nelson, 54, appeared in the Worcester Magistrate’s Court last week charged with assaulting two teenagers with a riding crop and chaining one of them to a bed.

According to the charge sheet the alleged victims are Nelson’s daughter and a 16-year-old girl she has been a mother to for six years.

She said she had a long history of behavioural problems and failing discipline with the pair.

Meanwhile, at a meeting this week of four of the six mothers who had children in Nelson’s care, confirmed that they had had no contact with their kids since they were sent to places of safety two weeks ago.

The anxious mothers include three struggling Kraaifontein single parents: Andiswa, mother to a daughter of 3 and a son of 9; Nosipho, mother of a son aged 8; and Cindy, who has a son of 2.

The fourth mother, Loveness from Dunoon, has a close relationship with Nelson who has cared for her 11- and 13-year-old daughters since they were babies. Six years ago Nelson took her 16-year-old accuser under her wing at the age of 10.

The Western Cape Department of Social Development responded to the crisis two weeks ago with a team of nine social workers.

In desperation some of the mothers visited Kraaifontein social workers, who could not assist.

“I was there on Monday with my sister Nosipho,” said Andiswa. “But they don’t know anything. They didn’t give us a straight answer. They said they would get back to us.”

“I’m stressing about my child because I don’t know where he is,” said Nosipho.

Cindy said she had called the investigating officer for more information. “He told me my child is going to come back to me, but a procedure needs to be followed. For now I don’t know anything about my child. The social workers haven’t phoned me either.”

“We need our kids,” said Andiswa. “We want to communicate with them. We don’t want them (social workers) to give our kids to another person because they are not going to treat our kids right.”

Mothers Nomeko, who is critically ill in hospital, and Le-Anne who were not at the meeting later confirmed through sources that they too were in the dark about the children’s whereabouts and had had no contact with them.

The department paints a different picture. “I have been reassured by the supervisor of the designated social worker team that contact has been made with the parents,” said spokesperson Cayla Murray.

“In some cases, parents have been able to visit the children in their place of safety. However, the remaining two parents were not contacted as their details were either incomplete or outdated.”

Despite the charges against Nelson the mothers want social workers to know that they support her.

“We are there for Gali,” said Andiswa. “All the parents are praying for her. The love that she gives those kids we can’t even give them.”

Each month is a challenge as Nelson apparently receives no funding or maintenance from the parents and has to rely on her own monthly maintenance and grocery donations to feed the children.

“We struggle but we are never without food and love,” said Nelson, who claims her work caring for children is God’s calling following a “radical conversion” in 1982.

“In the weeks that followed, my life began to change from self-centredness, to God- and other-centeredness. I began realising how much joy there is in serving, rather than in seeking to be served.”

She is concerned the children formerly in her care have been uprooted and are missing their parents and school.

“Their principal warned not to keep them a day out of school if possible. Now they’ve been many days out of school and will go to a different style of teaching if we don’t do something.”