Picture: A pregnant teenager/Generic
By OBAKENG MAJE
10 August 2026 – The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in North West said 17 years ago, more than 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings and confronted the apartheid state with courage and an unambiguous demand for freedom. The EFF said among the central organisers of that historic march was Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati, a daughter of the North West, who was born in Ganyesa, near Vryburg and later served as mayor of Naledi Local Municipality.
EFF provincial spokesperson, Fanon Moema said on 28 February 2007, the Bophirima District Council adopted a resolution renaming the district in her honour. Moema said while the naming of a district honours her activism, it remains a far cry from continuing her fight for freedom.
“In fact, it is spitting on her grave that the legacy of her activism should end with a district municipality named after her, while there is an ongoing massacre of the childhoods and futures of girl children in the province.
“The most honest way to honour Mama Ruth Mompati is not through ceremonial speeches and Women’s Day rallies. It is to ask whether the girl children who walk the streets, attend the schools and use the clinics of the North West are safe,” he said.
Moema further said the public health care data paints an even more disturbing picture. He added that a 2026 analysis found that, during the financial year ending in 2025, 100 girls between the ages of 10 and 14, gave birth and 90 girls in the same age group terminated pregnancies in North West public health facilities.
“The data does not include girl children who were raped, but did not fall pregnant, or cases of rape that were never reported. One hundred children giving birth and 90 terminating pregnancies in the North West is 100 too many.
“Behind every number is a child whose body was forced to carry an adult burden, whose education was disrupted and whose childhood can never be returned. Rape is treated as a Schedule 6 Offence in the same schedule as the most serious forms of murder. However, violence committed against girl children has been normalised to such an extent that family members, members of the community and the Departments of Education, Health and Social Development will diligently report lesser offences against children to SAPS, while the visible consequences of the rape of girl children are responded to without the urgency and decisiveness they demand,” said Moema.
He said when a patient arrives at a hospital with a gunshot wound, the injury is instinctively treated as possible evidence of violence. Moema said yet when an 11-year-old child arrives pregnant, too often the state sees only a maternity patient and records another delivery.
“That pregnancy may be evidence of rape. That girl is a child before she is a maternity statistic. She must be treated with compassion and immediately connected to medical care, psychosocial support, social protection and a proper criminal investigation.
“SAPS cannot wait for the child or her family to open a case before acting on the information before it. A school concealing abuse to protect its reputation, a health professional treating the pregnancy but ignoring the possible crime, a social worker submitting a referral that nobody tracks, or SAPS refusing to open a docket, makes these institutions complicit in the silence that protects perpetrators,” he said.
The Guardian 