At ChildSafe South Africa’s Annual General Meeting, guest speaker Sarah Roberts, Western Cape Commissioner for Children, delivered an impassioned address calling for collective responsibility, proactive caregiver education, and cross-sector collaboration to prevent childhood injuries. Introduced by ChildSafe Executive Director Zaitoon Rabaney, the Commissioner began by reflecting on her visit to ChildSafe’s educational training facilities, noting humourously how a walk through their safety kitchen made her realise just how much she needed to rearrange her own home before becoming a grandmother. She emphasised that keeping young children safe requires constant, proactive awareness, particularly because young children cannot speak for themselves to articulate the hazards surrounding them.
Clarifying her statutory mandate, the head of the province’s child oversight body outlined the distinct role of her office as the only provincial institution in South Africa established by legislation specifically to champion, protect, and promote children’s rights. Operating completely independently of political affiliation and reporting directly to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, the office oversees four key provincial departments: Health, Social Development, Education, and Cultural Affairs and Sport. Supported by two dedicated branches, Awareness and Monitoring, and Advice and Investigation, her team regularly travels directly into rural communities across the province, such as Citrusdal, ensuring that provincial policies and service delivery oversight remain grounded in the lived experiences of children rather than just data on a screen.
Turning to child safety, the keynote speaker highlighted sobering provincial data indicating that approximately 40% of child deaths in the Western Cape stem from unnatural causes. While public attention frequently centres around violent crime and gang-related incidents, the majority of fatalities and serious trauma among infants and toddlers occur within their immediate environments, including homes, crèches, daycares, and early learning centres. These incidents are overwhelmingly linked to motor vehicle collisions, pedestrian accidents, fire, burn injuries from dangerous substances or hot liquids, drowning, and neglect. Stressing that every single one of these causes is entirely preventable, she insisted that keeping children safe is not a matter of choice or discretion, but a non-negotiable duty incumbent upon every single adult in society.
In closing, she commended ChildSafe for its tangible and expanding public health interventions across South Africa. She specifically celebrated the remarkable growth of the Hospital Talk project, which expanded from reaching 1,622 parents and caregivers to more than 7,314 in the subsequent reporting period. Furthermore, she applauded the organisation’s geographic reach into rural areas across the Eastern Cape, Free State, and KwaZulu-Natal, where training 270 Early Childhood Development practitioners had a ripple effect impacting 18,285 families. Urging civil society, government departments, and the private sector to dismantle institutional silos, she reminded attendees that the era of working in isolation is over, because protecting children and their families is a shared, collective responsibility.