A toilet in Site B, France Section where a baby’s body was found. Photo by Mary-Anne Gontsana.
26 June 2014
Residents of Site B in Khayelitsha were shocked and angered after the body of a baby was found in a toilet last week. The tiny body lay between pieces of paper inside the bucket system toilet.
A resident who did not want to be named said her mother had been sweeping the yard on Friday morning when she had spotted blood from the closed toilet. She had gone to investigate and found the dead baby.
The toilet is shared by three families and the bucket is emptied three times a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“Whoever did this must have done it early Friday morning knowing that the buckets are collected between 9am and 10am,” she said.
Police spokesman Andre Traut said the circumstances were being investigated and an inquest case had been opened.
Residents said last year, a baby’s body had been found buried in the bushes nearby.
Meanwhile, Harare police are looking for a mother of a baby girl found abandoned on Wednesday at the corner of Swartklip and Steve Biko Road in Endlovini in the Khayelitsha cemetery. The baby is believed to be three-months old. She survived and is in the care of social services.
Chief executive of Cape Town Child Welfare Niresh Ramklass said in the past three months five children had been found abandoned in Cape Town. In the 2013/2014 year, which ran from April last year, to March this year, 30 children had been abandoned, he said.
Out of Africa Children’s Foundation, which provides a safe haven for abandoned and abused children, has a “baby safe”, where parents can drop off unwanted babies anonymously.
The Foundation’s chief executive officer Kim Highfield said they were in the process of moving their baby safe unit to another facility in Parklands from Newlands. “We had a problem with vagrants putting their belongings in there, so we had to stop using the baby safe for a while.”
Once something is put into it, the safe unit locks automatically. What has been placed inside cannot be taken out except by staff.
The safe is open 24 hours a day and is “definitely being used”, said Highfield.
Pinky Ciya from the Child Welfare’s Khayelitsha branch said the branch had dealt with two abandoned babies in April and three in May.