US embassy cable - 05MAPUTO617

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MAPUTO 000617 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
AF/S - TREGER, G/TIP - RYOUSEY, AF/RSA - RZUEHLKE, PRETORIA 
FOR VICTOR VOCKERODT 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ELAB, KFRD, KCRM, KWMN, PHUM, PREF, SMIG, MZ, SF, WZ, Trafficking in Persons 
SUBJECT: ALLEGED CHILD TRAFFICKING FROM MOZAMBIQUE TO SOUTH 
AFRICA 
 
1. (SBU) SUMMARY: A South African NGO, Amazing Grace 
Children's Center, based in the town of Malelane near the 
border with Mozambique, is sheltering half a dozen children 
that appear to have been trafficked from Mozambique into 
South Africa. This Center says it has been working with 
trafficking victims - mainly children - for several years, 
and seems quite active in a campaign to combat trafficking. 
Emboff visited the Center on May 4 and gained preliminary 
information about its work and the dimensions of the child 
trafficking problem. Police in South Africa, particularly 
the Child Protection Unit in the nearby provincial capital of 
Nelspruit, are supportive of the Center and eager to assist. 
Working in close coordination with Embassy Pretoria, we would 
like to follow this initial visit with further contact to 
learn more and see what steps can be taken on both sides of 
the border to start to address the problem of child 
trafficking. END SUMMARY. 
 
2. (U) Emboff visited Amazing Grace Children's Center in 
Malelane, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa on May 4 to 
investigate reports of child trafficking from Mozambique to 
South Africa. He met with the Center's director, Grace 
Mashaba, and toured the few buildings on the premises. In 
making the visit emboff was following up on some leads 
provided by Justina Cumbe, the Mozambican director of a local 
NGO in Maputo, FECIV, active in women's and children's rights 
issues. This visit was coordinated in advance with Embassy 
Pretoria. 
 
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Amazing Grace Children's Center 
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3. (U) Mashaba, a Malawian by birth and formerly a child farm 
worker in the area, started the Center more than a decade ago 
as a haven for street children. She told emboff that in the 
past several years the Center has taken in child trafficking 
victims, most of them from Mozambique but some from other 
neighboring countries. The Center staff try to locate their 
families and arrange their return. In the interim, the 
children are given shelter, food, and rudimentary schooling 
(though much of the schooling is provided by the local school 
system). The Center receives support from the South African 
government of 22 Rand (roughly three and a half dollars) per 
child per day. This is welcome but inadequate, and the 
Center relies on supplementary outside donations to get by. 
 
4. (U) The Center's location is on Factory Street (exact 
number not given) in the small town of Malelane, telephone 
27-13-790-0423, fax 27-13-790-1789. Ms. Grace Mashaba's 
cell phone is 27-82-494-9709. The email address for the 
Center is agch@soft.co.za. There is a Johannesburg branch 
office, also known as the Amazing Grace Children's Center. 
The telephone number for this branch is 011-9488-920; its 
street address was not given. 
 
5. (U) At the time of emboff's visit, Mashaba said, there 
were seven Mozambican children at the Center, all of them, 
evidently, the victims of trafficking. Five were away 
attending school in the town but emboff saw one of the other 
two. 
 
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Peace Corps Helping Out 
----------------------- 
6. (U) While at the Center, emboff met a U.S. Peace Corps 
volunteer working there. She will be leaving in September. 
Her predecessor, according to Mashaba, after leaving the 
Center in 2003 went to work on child trafficking issues in 
Egypt. 
 
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Children on Farms 
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7. (SBU) Mashaba claimed that "hundreds" of Mozambican 
children were working in surrounding farms in the area, some 
of them trafficking victims. (Note: According to Mashaba, 
under South African law one must be 18 years of age to work 
as a laborer on a farm. End note.). The odd child, who for 
some reason was not wanted on a farm, occasionally arrived at 
her Center, after being found abandoned in the area and 
brought in by local authorities. Mashaba said that local 
police were helpful in this regard, mainly because they did 
not want loose kids wandering the streets. She was not 
popular with farmers, however. She added that that afternoon 
she was going to "help bury" a Mozambican woman who had died 
on a farm earlier, and then would be making arrangements with 
the farmer for the children. She added that she planned in 
the near future to approach labor unions working among the 
farm laborers about the problem of trafficked children there. 
 
8. (SBU) In the midst of talking with Ms. Mashaba, emboff had 
an opportunity to speak by telephone with Inspector Shabangu 
of the Nelspruit Child Protection Unit, an ally of Mashaba's 
working in the nearby provincial capital of Nelspruit. He 
agreed that many Mozambican children were working for farmers 
in the area, many of them as "garden boys," and that child 
trafficking was a serious problem. Asked why local people 
did not often report incidences of child trafficking, he 
replied that many were relatively simple and uneducated, and 
accepted that others were "taking care" of the children. He 
welcomed contact with the US Embassy in Maputo, noting that 
there were instances of children from his area who went 
missing across the border in Mozambique. He hoped the 
Embassy could facilitate his making contacts with local 
Mozambican police in such circumstances. Inspector Shabangu 
can be reached by telephone at 27(0)83-688-1287. 
 
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Raising Awareness 
----------------- 
9. (U) The Amazing Grace Children's Center has initiated 
several activities to counter child trafficking in the past 
year, according to one of its brochures. In March 2004, in 
coordination with other local NGOs in the area and some from 
neighboring Mozambique, the Center organized a two-day 
conference on child trafficking in Hectorspruit, a farming 
community a dozen miles from Malelane. Emboff was given a 
copy of an article on the conference carried by the local 
paper, The Voice of Nkomazi. According to the article, 
"people are trafficked for a variety of purposes, such as 
sexual exploitation, forced labour or slavery, forced 
marriages, adoption or the removal of organs or other body 
parts." In January 2005 the Center organized a soccer 
tournament around the trafficking issue at the black township 
of Naas, near the main Mozambique/South Africa border 
crossing point of Ressano Garcia/Komatipoort. Inspector 
Shabangu attended and addressed the crowd. In April 2005 
Mashaba organized a radio talk show on the subject of child 
trafficking. 
 
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Through Swaziland 
----------------- 
10. (SBU) According to Mashaba, most traffickers brought 
their victims into South Africa from Mozambique via 
Swaziland. She said that Swazi border controls were 
particularly weak. 
 
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Transiting South Africa 
----------------------- 
11. (SBU) Mashaba added that many trafficking victims from 
the region were flown out of Johannesburg and Cape Town 
airport to other countries. Many immigration and customs 
officials were corrupt and so allowed this. She told emboff 
that recently two Zairian girls were brought in to her center 
when South African border police became suspicious. The 
girls were to have been sent overseas via Cape Town. They 
have since been returned to their family in Zaire. 
 
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On the Mozambican Side 
---------------------- 
12. (U) Mashaba told emboff that the Center has used its own 
resources to repatriate seven children to Mozambique over the 
past several years. On May 17 emboff spoke with Lea 
Boaventura, regional coordinator of the Campaign Against 
Child Trafficking and deputy director of the Maputo branch of 
Terre des Hommes (a German NGO). According to her, in the 
past several months a Mozambican judge, Marcia Pinto, has 
taken responsibility for crimes against children and has 
traveled to meet her counterparts in South Africa on the 
problem of trafficked children. Ms. Boaventura is hopeful 
that she will be more attentive to helping reunite trafficked 
children with their families. She added that recently a 
woman police superintendent of Maputo's First Squad has begun 
several training workshops for other police officers on child 
trafficking, and that this should motivate the police to 
provide assistance in instances of child trafficking. 
 
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Comment 
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13. (SBU) We would like to remain in contact with Amazing 
Grace Children's Center and Ms. Mashaba to learn more about 
the scope of the child trafficking problem and what can be 
done about it. We will coordinate our efforts closely with 
Embassy Pretoria. We will be meeting with FECIV, Terre des 
Hommes and other NGOs and officials on this end in our 
efforts to encourage more action by the GRM. 
 
14. (U) Embassy Pretoria has cleared on this report, but has 
reservations about whether the Mozambican children mentioned 
were indeed trafficked. In its opinion, further information 
is needed in order to reach this conclusion. 
LA LIME