ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of children on the streets punctuating the cityscape of many urban areas is global, disquieting, and escalating. The media and scholars alike decry the increase in population and menace of street children seen as “uncouth” for their antisocial tendencies in Zimbabwe, with W. Ruparanganda warning that they are likely to emerge even in growth points and rural villages. Most street children come from dysfunctional and disrupted families where poverty, domestic violence, divorce, criminality, and parental drug abuse are common. The children reported having committed diverse acts of delinquency such as stealing, beating up parents or guardians, especially step-parents, and having engaged in premarital sex. The data revealed that the street children really face traumatic experiences at home, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, family separation, and reconstitution in the form of orphanhood, parental divorce and step-parenting, poverty, and HIV stigma.
