NGCOBO J availability of protective measures. The same considerations require the presiding officer to provide any other child witness the protection contemplated in section 153(5). This is more so because the subsection contemplates that the presiding officer shall act of his or her own initiative. [145] It is true that, in the case of other child witnesses, it is not peremptory that they testify in camera. The matter is left to the discretion of the court. Child witnesses stand on a different footing from child complainants in sexual offence cases. Child witnesses may be called to testify on a wide variety of offences ranging from assault, murder, theft to malicious injury to property. Similarly, the nature of the evidence that they may be called upon to give may differ remarkably from one case to another. A boy of 15 years may be called upon to testify that he saw an accused remove a bicycle from a neighbour’s house. A 17 and a half year old girl may be called upon to give evidence to the effect that she received a credit card from an accused and swiped it through a credit card machine. Yet another child may be called upon to testify on some gruesome murder or sexual offence. The identity of the child complainant is protected from disclosure by section 154(3). That provision prohibits the disclosure of the identity of a child complainant. [146] Given this wide-ranging nature of the evidence that child witnesses in general may be called upon to give, and the wide-ranging ages of child witnesses, it is desirable that the question whether proceedings should be held in camera should be answered on a case-by-case basis. Indeed, it is desirable that courts should have the 75