Anti-Spanking Bill may create problems and pit families apart.
The Western Cape based NGO known as Children rights project has once again re-emerged with what it attempted in 2007, and got defeated by various sectors of South Africa, lobbying our government through Social Development Department that this country must ban spanking or corporal punishment to our children at home.
This organization was equally party to the banning of corporal punishment in schools. In effect, if government were to accede and pass this bill, it will mean that all of us as parents are going to be turned automatic criminals by raising our children in forms that include disciplining them by way of spanking. This should be a serious problem for any level-headed South African. I have attempted to listen to their cogent argument that underpins their lobbying including prevailing cases of child abuses, but these abuses they elevate are isolated incidences which in many ways, the domestic violence Act and the Children Act in its current form sufficiently addresses.
I hold the view that any legislation that must be enacted has to be informed by the wider legitimacy of citizenry so that its enforceability and authority will be natural. Sufficient societal support must palpably exist otherwise the alternative amounts to the act of truncating democracy - the will of the people.
South Africa has a society which is at least over 70% Christian. Many may not be devotees but they have been raised along Christianity lines whose scriptures encourages the use of corporal punishment as one amongst the corrective measures. The same is true of other religions in terms of not averse to this method of raising children. By Constitution we might be a secular state but such a recognition of societal orientation is important as popular government.
The Proverbs ( 13:24) says: " He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him".