Smacking

For a year now, smacking a child has been illegal in South Africa. Yesterday, as I waited in a police charge office, there was a pretty young Xhosa mother laying charges at the desk -- with a toddler who kept toddling away. Every time it toddled away, she would grab it by the wrist, pull it back, and smack it. These were hard smacks -- they echoed around the whole charge office. Nobody was perturbed -- in fact, nobody seemed to notice. OBSERVATION: Smacking is ubiquitous in Xhosa culture. One of the reservations about the new law is that it could be applied selectively, for the wrong reasons.