Southern Africa: Borders of Pain – Why Children With Disabilities Must Cross SADC Borders for Care

Twelve-year-old Naledi sat on a cardboard box at the Beitbridge border post, her twisted left leg wrapped in a faded blanket. At the same time, her mother pleaded with an immigration officer for permission to cross into South Africa.

They had travelled overnight from Gwanda in Matabeleland South in the back of a pickup truck after a church group told them about a clinic in Polokwane where she might finally be fitted with a prosthetic limb. The nearest clinic to their home had only painkillers.

The…