Durban - Fighting back tears, a labourer has told of the horror of stumbling across a newborn baby abandoned in the crook of a tree in Westville on Thursday.
Muntu Mngwevu, 65, was clearing bush in the suburb’s Berea West area and had gone to relieve himself when the last thing he expected to see was a naked baby – alive and with its umbilical cord still attached – dangling from the tree.
“It was a beautiful baby,” he told the Daily News.
Mngwevu said he alerted people in the neighbourhood, and emergency crews rushed to the scene.
“At about 10 in the morning, my stomach started giving me problems. I crossed the freeway to find a place where I could relieve myself, but could not find one. So I went back and looked for another spot.
“When I saw a place where I could relieve myself, I saw something dangling from the tree,” he said.
“I saw it was a baby boy. Ants had started to crawl all over the baby.”
He said the incident had left him deeply traumatised.
“Why couldn’t the mother put the child up for adoption?” he asked. He wished the mother could be caught and “be severely punished”.
Mngwevu, who lives with his daughter and two grandchildren in Inanda, said if the baby had been a few months older, he would have adopted it.
Pamela Jimu, 27, who works in a house nearby, said she heard Mngwevu calling for help.
When she came outside, he told her what had happened and she accompanied him back to where the baby was.
Jimu said it was difficult to access the tree and she asked Mngwevu to get the baby, but that he was scared to touch him in case he injured the infant.
“I told him to get the baby or it might die. I went to a woman who was parked nearby and asked her to get a towel, but it was too small. I asked another woman to give me a towel.”
Jimu, a mother of two, said it was the first time she had seen something like this.
Netcare911 spokesman, Chris Botha, said today the baby had been taken to King Dinuzulu hospital (formerly King George V Hospital).
“The baby is doing very well.”
He said paramedics who were called by the public found the newborn covered in mud and grass, and in a critical condition.
Paramedics managed to resuscitate and warm the child at the scene.
On its website, the National Adoption Coalition South Africa, citing most recently available statistics, said about 3 500 babies were abandoned in South Africa in 2010.
Daily News