In the first half of 2025, 798 children between the ages of 10-14 gave birth in South Africa. Under the law, each of these cases should have been reported to SAPS for formal investigation.
Yet, the Democratic Alliance’s Gender-Based Violence Task Team has revealed that only 110 child births were reported to SAPS in the 2025/2026 financial year.
Its investigation found that a chronic lack of available rape kits, incomplete forms, and staff shortages for social workers led to just a fraction of child birth cases being reported.
On 12 June 2026, the DA lodged a formal complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) against government departments, including the provincial departments of health, social development, and education and national departments of police and justice, for allegedly failing to report and prosecute child sexual abuse cases that led to child pregnancies.
The investigation, led by DA Members of Parliament Glynnis Breytenbach, Lisa Shickerling, Angel Khanyile, Bridget Masango, Michéle Clarke, and Nazley Shariff, uncovered a systemic breakdown in how statutory rape cases are investigated and prosecuted.
Members of the DA's GBV task team (from left to right) Michéle Clarke, Lisa Shickerling, Nazley Shariff and Angel Khanyile addressed media outside Sentinel House in Parktown on 12 June. (Photo: Naledi Mashishi) In one instance, DA spokesperson for police Lisa Shickerling detailed how she visited an 11-year-old girl who had given birth and found instances of girls as young as nine who had delivered a baby. In another, DA spokesperson for health Michéle Clarke described a case of a 15-year-old girl in the Western Cape who was not assisted at a clinic after a gang rape, and subsequently died while waiting to be attended to in a police station.
“SAPS cannot tell us where the statutory rape cases were opened as a result of mandatory Form 22 reports from the health care system. This raises serious concerns for us that cases are either not being reported properly, and most certainly are not being investigated once reported,” Shickerling said.
“And we do know that many families go to police officers and beg them not to open cases, because in most cases the perpetrator is known to them. It’s either a family member, it is the child’s biological father, it is the boyfriend of the mother, a very close family member or friend, or many times the breadwinner.”
The DA investigated the crisis through a series of parliamentary questions and site visits.
Over 50% of reported cases withdrawn
According to Section 54 (1) of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences & Related Matters) Amendment Act, children below the age of 16 cannot legally consent to sex. Any person who has knowledge of a sexual offence committed against a child must report it to the police. It requires mandatory reporting of children under the age of 16.
The law mandates specific professionals, including doctors, nurses, teachers, or social workers, to report the offence. Reporters must complete a Form 22 document detailing their relationship to the child and the nature of the sexual abuse, which must be given to a social worker. Then the incident must be reported to the police.
However, research has found that healthcare workers often report inconsistently, with some medical workers fearing that reporting victims could deter them from seeking medical care. Other factors like stigma, a lack of available rape kits, and being turned away due to territorial boundaries are barriers to reporting.
DA spokesperson for health Michéle Clarke addressed the media outside Sentinel House in Parktown, Johannesburg on the DA's submission to SAHRC on the underreporting of child pregnancy cases on 12 June. (Photo: Naledi Mashishi) Data presented by SAPS to the Portfolio Committee on Police on 4 June 2026 revealed that over the past five years, 3,232 cases of statutory rape were reported to the police. Out of these cases, 1,853 (57.3%) were withdrawn and only 14% resulted in a conviction.
According to SAPS, the factors that contribute to cases being withdrawn included harmful cultural beliefs, financial dependency on perpetrators, fear of secondary victimisation and stigmatisation, threats from perpetrators, and a preference among some families and communities for alternative forms of dispute resolution.
At the portfolio briefing, Acting Deputy National Commissioner Hilda Senthumule (who is currently facing criminal charges in another matter ) said that it was a crime to fail to report the cases, and those who failed to do so could face up to 10 years in prison. She added that police officers should not allow cases to be withdrawn either.
“So those who do withdraw such cases are actually acting outside the law and they should face consequence management, both departmentally and in terms of the law.”
However, SAPS has not collected statistics on the number of people who have been charged for failing to report or police officers who have faced disciplinary…
Read the full article at Daily Maverick →
ZA