Nicholas Ninow raped a seven-year-old girl. Nkosinathi Phakathi was convicted of 90 rapes, many involving schoolchildren. Mortimer Saunders raped and murdered three-year-old Courtney Pieters. Could earlier intervention have prevented some of these crimes? And if these men ever leave prison, parents should be able to know who they are.

Nineteen months ago, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi promised to make the National Register for Sex Offenders public. She warned Parliament that secrecy had enabled repeat offending and caused “untold harm to children and other vulnerable groups.”

That was February 2025.

It is now October 2026. The register remains closed. The amendments remain in draft form. And somewhere in this country tonight, a child is being hurt by someone whose name is already on that list.

I have spent too many years in the trenches of South Africa’s criminal justice system to accept this any longer. That is why I launched a 30-day campaign to publish the names, photographs, convictions, and sentences of verified adult sexual offenders from public court records. Not from the confidential register. Not from leaked documents. From the courts. From the public record. From information that every South African has a right to know.

Let me tell you what the government’s delay actually means.

As of October 2025, there were 33 444 names on the National Register for Sex Offenders. That is 33 444 people convicted by South African courts of sexual offences against children and vulnerable persons. They live in our communities. They work in our schools. They coach our children’s sports teams. They volunteer at our churches.

And you cannot check a single one of them.

But here is what should shock every parent in this country to their core: the South African Human Rights Commission found a documented shortfall of 10 748 convicted offenders who have not yet been entered onto the register at all. Convicted. Sentenced. And never entered into the system meant to track them.

When a school applies for a clearance certificate for a new teacher, the system may tell them there is no record. When a crèche checks a caretaker, the system may say the same thing. Not because the person is innocent. But because the government never entered their name.

Ten thousand seven hundred and forty-eight gaps in our protection system. Each one a potential child. Each one a potential victim.

Let me tell you about a case. A brother-in-law. A man trusted by his family. He raped his wife’s younger sister starting when she was six years old. The abuse continued for nine years. Nine years of silence. Nine years of threats. Nine years of a child carrying a secret that should never have been hers to bear.

The victim finally told a school carer. A social worker was informed. A case was opened. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in October 2025. His name was ordered onto the register.

But by then, she was fifteen. Her childhood was gone. The prosecutor described how she experienced depression, frustration, anger. How she doubted herself. How she felt alone. How she became suicidal.

A public register would not have erased what happened to her. But it might have given someone, a teacher, a relative, or a neighbour the information they needed to ask the question that could have stopped it earlier.

I have heard the arguments against what I am doing.

Privacy. Rehabilitation. The risk of vigilantism.

Let me be absolutely clear about what my campaign does and does not do.

It does not publish victims’ names. It does not publish home addresses. It does not publish identity numbers. It does not access the confidential register. It publishes what is already available in public court records, the names, photographs, convictions, and sentences of adults convicted of sexual offences.

The Kwanele Foundation, which works with survivors, has backed greater public access. Its founder, Sihle Sibisi, said safeguards are essential particularly to ensure victims’ names are never published but stressed that the government must speed up the legislative process because gender-based violence remains a national crisis.

Dr Shaheda Omar of the Teddy Bear Clinic has warned against allowing the register to become a form of public punishment. I agree. This is not punishment. This is prevention. The punishment happened in court. The register is a warning system.

In September 2025, Minister Kubayi told Parliament that the Office of the Chief State Law Adviser had concluded the register could not be made public under existing law. Section 52 of the Sexual Offences Act prohibits publication. She said a “law of general application” would be required. She said she had directed the department to prepare amendments.

That was over a year ago.

The draft Bill was prepared. It was circulated for internal consultation. But as of late September 2026, the Department of Justice confirmed that work on the legislative amendments was “continuing.” No timeline. No deadline. Just the same bureaucratic language that has been used to defer action on this issue for years.

I am not doing this because I want to be controversial. I am doing this because I am a father. I am doing this because I am a South African. I am doing this because I have seen the faces of survivors who were told that their pain would be recorded, that their abuser would be tracked, that the system would protect the next child.

The register exists. The names are there. The convictions are real. The danger is present.

What is missing is the will to open the door.

Minister Kubayi, you said in February 2025 that keeping the register from the public has allowed offenders to commit the same offence repeatedly. You were right. You said it caused untold harm to children. You were right. So act.

Set a deadline. Publish the amendments. Bring the Bill to Parliament. Open the register. Not in another nineteen months. Not after another round of consultations. Not after the next election. Now.

Because somewhere in South Africa, right now, a child is in a room with someone who has done this before. Someone whose name is on a list that you cannot see.

And we are doing nothing.