By Bronwynne Jooste
Staff Reporter
More than 500 babies were abandoned in Cape Town over a 12-month period, according to Cape Town Child Welfare.
Other child welfare organisations in the Mother City agree that the number of cases is on the increase.
Police, too, have confirmed that they are recording cases of child abandonment with four such cases being reported in the past two months. Two of these babies died.
In some cases, older babies were dumped. Many of these children had clearly been well looked after before being abandoned, according to representatives from children's homes.
In other cases, mothers left their babies at hospitals immediately after giving birth. They could not be traced because they had given hospitals the wrong contact details.
Niresh Ramklass, Cape Town Child Welfare's chief executive, said: "It would seem that something has gone drastically wrong in the family setup; it's not in human nature to throw a child away".
Cape Town Child Welfare said in its 2009/2010 annual report that between 500 and 600 babies had been abandoned during that period.
A baby who came to be known as Vicky Unknown Monday was found on a rubbish dump in Phumlani Village in Lotus River in March.
At the beginning of August, the body of a newborn baby was found in Belhar.
The baby, still wrapped in a pink blanket, was found by a passerby under a railway bridge next to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
Earlier that week, a council worker discovered a fully formed foetus in a large container that sifts human waste at the Milnerton water works.
On August 3, a baby boy was found in an open field in Brackenfell. The newborn baby survived and is being cared for at a place of safety.
Last month, the body of a baby was found near a communal toilet in the Burundi informal settlement near Mfuleni.
It was wrapped in a pink towel and was wearing a pink nappy. A pink clamp was still attached to the baby's umbilical cord. The infant was estimated to be about a week old.
Police spokesman Warrant Officer November Filander said the police were not able to provide statistics on child abandonment.
However, Ramklass said there had been a "sudden increase - there are more cases of babies being dumped".
"They are zipped in suitcases or in plastic bags."
Ramklass said that in cases where babies were a few months old, they had been well looked after.
He said there were several cases of finding newborn babies near schools, indicating that the mothers could still have been schoolgirls.
Eleanor Brook, from Home for Hope, another haven for children in Cape Town, said many of the abandoned babies they had cared for had been left in hospitals.
"It's mostly unbooked births, where the mothers just come to the hospital for the first time when they are ready to give birth... a mother wouldn't just throw away her baby."
Anne Bruce, a social worker at Nazareth House, said that in central Cape Town and surrounding areas, more foreign babies, and those whose parents lived on the streets, were abandoned.
"They have a crisis and they are new in the city, they have no one to turn to. It can be quite intimidating if you can't even speak English."
Brook said: "If they approach the police or an organisation, they can get the help they need, or agree that the baby be adopted. That speeds up the process.
"If not, there needs to be an investigation and social workers have high caseloads."