MOGOENG CJ This then resulted in many children being regularly subjected to savage and brutal chastisement without any legal protection whatsoever from that cruel or excessive punishment.6 Societal outcry against this abuse dates as far back as the late nineteenth century, which led to the adoption of legal measures to curb child abuse and afford greater legal protection to children.7 [10] In this spirit, Cockburn CJ said: “A parent . . . may for the purpose of correcting what is evil in the child inflict moderate and reasonable corporal punishment always however with this condition that it is moderate and reasonable. If it be administered for the gratification of passion or of rage, or if it be immoderate and excessive in its nature or degree, or if it be protracted beyond the child’s power of endurance or with an instrument unfitted for the purpose and calculated to produce danger to life and limb, in all such cases the punishment is excessive and the violence is unlawful.”8 [11] Burchell and Milton correctly observe that disciplinary chastisement has been considered excusable provided it serves a corrective and admonitory purpose.9 This legal entitlement of parents to discipline their own children exists only within the confines of moderation and reasonableness.10 Ill-treatment or abuse of children exceeds those bounds and is in law punishable by reason of its unlawfulness. [12] Eleven years before we became a constitutional democracy, South Africa already saw the need to pass legislation that limited parental authority and provided that parental ill-treatment of a child constituted a punishable offence.11 Much progress has since 6 Id at 161. 7 Id. 8 R v Hopley (1860) 2 F&F 202, cited in R v Janke 1913 TPD 382 at 385. 9 Burchell and Milton above n 3 at 163. 10 Id. 11 Section 50(1) and (2) of the Child Care Act 74 of 1983. 5