Child (18) with disability locked up by parents
MATSAPHA – An 18-year-old child with disability is locked up in the house for about nine hours a day while his parents and siblings go to work and school.
This is the story of *Themba, who is a paraplegic and mute. A paraplegic is a medical word for being paralysed from the waist down.
All his life, he has never attended school and has been confined in his parents’house, while his four siblings attend local primary and high schools in Manzini.
During a visit to the young man’s residence where his parents rent a bedsitter in Matsapha, his two siblings, a boy and a girl, were found. They were playing boisterous music while doing domestic chores. The other siblings were still at school.
This reporter was given a chair to sit. The parents were said to be at work and knocked off at 10pm. Both parents are working at a local prominent hotel in Matsapha.
School
According to the siblings, they were five and Themba was the firstborn child to their parents whom they lived with. All the children are attending school, save for their brother Themba.
“Our brother is locked inside the house because he is physically challenged. Our parents buy him food and clothes, the only difference is that when we all go to school and work, we lock him inside,” one of the siblings said.
He said before they went to school, they prepared food and water for their brother to eat and bath.
They shared that they had a way of understanding when he was hungry, or wanted to relieve himself. The minors mentioned that their mother would give him a lashing, just like the rest of them, when he was ‘out of hand’.
When asked how this could be, they said when he ate food that was not meant for him. The siblings shared that their brother’s laundry was done by either them or their mother.
When this reporter got inside the house to check on Themba, he was lying face down on a make-shift bed. There was a strong smell of urine inside the house. When he was greeted, he kept groaning. His siblings said he was not responsive because he was a little under the weather.
There is a bed where both parents sleep and a mattress next to it, where the four siblings sleep. Themba sleeps on a make-shift bed where a few sheets and a blanket are placed on the floor, just next to the door.
Principal Secretary (PS) in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office Makhosini Mndawe
said the office would send officials to conduct a socio-economic investigation to determine the young man’s condition. Thereafter, Mndawe mentioned that they would then take necessary action to address the situation.
According to a human rights activist, locking a person inside a house without the interaction of other people was a huge infringement on his or her human right of association.
Worse
He said the fact that Themba had a disability was worse, because he did not have the ability to do things on his own.
In an interview, Themba’s mother said: “I keep my child with disabilities locked in the house for hours because I have to go to work.” She said she loved her child and the rumours that she was abusing him were far from the truth. She went on to mention that she took care of her child just like the rest of her children. She said she had applied at St Joseph’s Mission School, where she was told that there was no space.
Meanwhile, she said they were currently building a home on Swazi Nation Land, and hopefully life would be better then. She said people talked because they had no clue on what was really going on in her life. She wondered why, unlike this publication, they had not approached and asked her, rather than forming negative opinions about her life and that of her family.
This is not the first time a person with a disability has been found to be in an unfavourable environment at the hands of a parent.
In 2019, this publication reported about a child with a disability who was exposed to harsh conditions as her family forced her to stay in a make-shift structure. The teenager, who was isolated and lived like a dog due to being physically incapacitated, lived at Mhlaleni in the Manzini Region. The 17-year-old *Nomsa had her feet wriggled across each other.
The teenager’s stepfather was quoted as having said she never had the privilege to walk ever since she was born. He said he found the child with the challenge when he met her mother. The stepfather claimed that the child’s biological father denied paternity, a scenario that propelled him to assume responsibility of the child as her official guardian. He also mentioned that the child was mentally challenged.
According to the stepfather, at first they tried to accommodate the minor in the family house, but due to that she was physically challenged, she would frequently soil herself inside the house if there was no one around to assist her.
*Not real name