"You can't escape it. From when you are born to when you are grown-up, they beat you, shout at you, insult you, and do what they like to control you.
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"I don't know why it has to be like that."
These are the words of an anonymous 16-year old boy from Uganda.
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The report says corporal punishment is part of too many children's "normal" lives at home and school on the continent.
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In addition, it says, hitting children is a lesson in bad behaviour; it teaches them that adults who demand their respect believe that violence is a legitimate way to sort out conflicts or impose authority.
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This was most commonly inflicted on three-year-old children, with a third of parents using "severe" corporal punishment - beating with a belt or stick - and this most commonly on four-year-olds.
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The most severe beatings at home and school are experienced by children from low income environments.
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"It also became clear... that children would like teachers and parents to talk to them and explain what they did wrong instead of using corporal punishment or other forms of humiliating or degrading punishment," the report says.
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"I feel like revenging, but I do not because these parents are big. I can do nothing," the report quotes a Ugandan 12-year-old boy as saying.
"I get regrets why I was born," says a teenage girl.
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says: Progress towards abolishing corporal punishment is being made, he says, but millions of the world's children still suffer from humiliating acts of violence, and these violations of their rights as human beings can have serious and lifelong effects.
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Violence begets violence and we shall reap a whirlwind. Children can be disciplined without violence that instils fear and misery."
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1933317,00.html