By Johnathan Paoli
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), accusing multiple government departments of failing to protect children from sexual abuse and statutory rape, after evidence presented to Parliament revealed significant gaps in reporting, investigation, and prosecution.
DA spokesperson on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Angel Khanyile in a statement on Sunday, said the party’s submission to the commission would include findings from a nationwide investigation conducted by the DA’s internal task team on gender-based violence, which examined how government departments respond to child pregnancies and suspected sexual abuse cases.
“The numbers simply do not add up, and Departments are working in silos, failing to comply with statutory reporting requirements, indicating a catastrophic failure in data management and sharing. Our children deserve to be protected, and at the very least, the systems in place to protect children should work,” Khanyile said.
The complaint follows recent presentations to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police, where police and government officials disclosed that thousands of statutory rape cases have either been withdrawn or failed to result in prosecutions, despite high numbers of child pregnancies and births recorded across the country.
According to the DA, information obtained from various departments revealed major discrepancies between the number of child pregnancies and births recorded by health authorities and the number of cases reported to law enforcement agencies.
The party highlighted data from the Department of Health showing that 122,302 adolescents gave birth during the 2023/24 financial year, including 2,716 girls aged between 10 and 14 years old.
By contrast, SAPS reported only 610 statutory rape cases during the same period.
Police statistics showed that nearly 40% of victims were 15 years old, while almost a third were 14 years old and more than 20% were 13 years old.
The DA further pointed to police data indicating that only 129 child births, 138 child pregnancies and 27 miscarriages or terminations involving children were reported for criminal investigation during 2023/24.
“What the DA uncovered should shock every South African. We believe that the fundamental constitutional rights of a child to dignity and to be protected from abuse are being violated by flawed systems that are working in silos,” Khanyile said.
The issue came under intense scrutiny during the meeting of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police last week, where members expressed alarm at the number of statutory rape cases that have been withdrawn over the past five years.
Police told MPs that 1,853 of the 3,232 statutory rape cases opened between the 2020/21 and 2024/25 financial years were withdrawn.
Portfolio Committee chairperson Ian Cameron described the figures as deeply concerning and called for stronger interventions to ensure offenders are prosecuted.
“SAPS must strengthen measures against adults who fail to report incidents of statutory rape and provide statistics on actions taken against those who neglect this legal obligation,” Cameron said.
Police officials attributed the withdrawal of cases to a range of social, economic and cultural factors, including financial dependence on perpetrators, fear of stigma, intimidation of victims and families, and the use of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms within communities.
Acting Deputy National Commissioner for Crime Detection Lieutenant-General Hilda Senthumule stressed that rape cases cannot legally be withdrawn by complainants because such offences are crimes against the state.
Committee members were particularly critical of failures by government institutions to report suspected statutory rape cases.
The DA’s complaint also cites provincial examples.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the Department of Social Development reportedly recorded no statutory rape reports to SAPS in 2024 despite receiving more than 2,000 related complaints.
In Mpumalanga, over 65,000 children aged between 10 and 19 gave birth in health facilities between 2020 and 2025, yet only a handful of cases were referred to social development authorities.
Khanyile said the party would ask the SAHRC to urgently investigate what it described as systemic failures across government departments, identify accountability measures and recommend reforms to better protect children.
INSIDE EDUCATION
