Quick, hit your kids

Well, it’s official. Quick, go hit one of your kids. You still can. It does have to be one of your children — but, still, rejoice, rejoice, the Children’s Amendment Bill has been defeated.

Not, admittedly, by a decisive vote in the hallowed halls of Parliament, with ringing speeches on the merits or demerits of hitting your children with belts or bats or sticks — in fact, the chairperson of the committee dealing with the Children’s Amendment Bill today (October 18) just shuffled his papers around, and said apologetically that the ANC caucus needs to meet again, and that the Children’s Amendment Bill will therefore not be voted on. (Read: the traditionalists in the House have the upper hand over those who think there should be a constitutional order, and the rights of the rug rats should be respected, like, you know, in the Constitution.) There was a palpable sense of loss in the room.

Even the parties who have vehemently lobbied for the right to beat their ankle biters, and thus against the Bill, looked a bit aghast. The African Christian Democratic Party’s Cheryllyn Dudley had reportedly asked last week if it was possible to refer in the legislation to “reasonable forms of corporal punishment”, because “spanking” was an important parental tool. The opposition of some majority and most minority party members to the clause outlawing corporal punishment means that the whole Bill, the entire 50 pages, carefully crafted, thought-through piece of law, is now possibly on ice until next year. A proposal to pass the rest of the Bill and leave out the contentious section, was not approved.

What is it about hitting people? In order to ensure our God-given right to hit our kids, we are apparently just going to turn our backs on the other issues dealt with in the Bill, like inter-country adoption, surrogate motherhood, child abduction and prohibition on child trafficking. Until next year. Maybe in February. If we have time.

Of course, it isn’t that people want to hit their children. Apparently, “We do not have the option … this is a command of God.” This from George Raath of Life Enrichment Ministries, who confided the commands of his Maker to Parliament’s social development portfolio committee. He reportedly said: “It’s very clear it’s a rod we’re talking about. It’s not talking to somebody; it’s not trying to teach him because he doesn’t know enough or anything like that. It is trying to teach him something through the rod.”

Well, that’s useful.

And it isn’t as though people have only just started thinking about this stuff about children. This law, bits of which struggled through Parliament in 2005, has been knocking around for years, since 1999, if memory serves. These are issues we started talking about before the turn of the millennium. But no, obviously, whomping your kids is an important cultural issue, and the committee is very worried about all you child smackers out there who will get tetchy about not being able to flog the little beasts and may vote the wrong way in Limpopo, or er … I mean, some other election.

So let’s not worry about the levels of violence and abuse in this country, and certainly let’s not put the children first. They don’t vote anywhere, do they?