Human Rights Commission Report on corporal punishment and Joshua Generation Church

The South African Human Rights Commission has instructed Cabinet to require the Department of Social Development (DSD) to, as soon as possible, bring South African law into line with various international human rights treaties which is has ratified and its own Constitution by prohibiting corporal punishment in the home.

Findings critical to addressing the extraordinarily and unacceptably high levels of violence against children in our country have been made in an Investigative Report released today by the South African Human Rights Commission (HRC). The Investigation was conducted as the result of a complaint made in October 2013 at the commission by Adriaan and Hannah Mostert, Carol Bower and Sonke Gender Justice. The complainants have objected against a parenting manual published by the Joshua Generation Church (JGC), which used four of its 39 pages to describe the length and thickness of the rod which parents should use in training up (sic) children as young as one-year-old.