Ensuring social inclusivity and healthy development for children who assist their visually impaired parents to beg on the streets in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article has been developed from a broader ongoing study of children who act as guides for parents with visual disabilities, who attempt to eke out meagre existences by begging on the streets. An impartial assessment of the plight of these children from an African cultural standpoint is dependent on an awareness of the moral impulse of humaneness which is known by the Nguni word “Ubuntu”. Granting the children social inclusivity and endeavouring to ensure their healthy development requires a strong sense of the need to recognise that their needs are the same as those of any other child who needs care and protection. Ubuntu provides a coherent indigenous conceptual framework from which it should be possible to develop appropriate policies and strategies to enable these children, eventually, to develop to their full potential.

Keywords: Children guides, child labour, Ubuntu/Unhu, inclusion, street begging, streetism