Photo Essay: Casualties of Freedom? South Africa’s Girls
Jamila Paksima, a IRP Fellow in the fall 2001program, was featured on the Bill Moyers show "NOW" on PBS Friday February 22. Paksima, an independent video journalist, traveled to South Africa on her IRP Fellowship to report on child rape. She describes her story this way:
CASUALITIES OF FREEDOM? SOUTH AFRICA'S GIRLS
"What about me? What if I'm HIV positive?" It is the question 9-year-old Tumi is asking her social worker and the same question 21,000 South African children who were raped last year would ask if they could find the words. But some of them can't because they are too young to talk.
Nine years old. Nine months old. Five months old. This is South Africa's latest truth, and it is a staggering horror. With the highest incidence or HIV/AIDS and rape in the world - child rape in South Africa is, for many of these small victims, both an act of violence and often a delayed and painful death sentence. Every 26 seconds a person is estimated to be raped in South Africa - now more than 41% of the reported cases are of children under the age of eighteen, 15% are under the age of eleven. This is a documentary that asks why? And what will it take to stop it?