by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Dec 24, 2025 | Abandonment, Adoption, Child and Youth Care Centres, Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights, Foster Care
A national care reform strategy has been agreed on by representatives of government and civil society in order to stop and prevent the institutionalisation of children. It’s a plan based on South Africa’s prioritisation of family care for children. However, understanding the context in which deinstitutionalisation is being rolled out is essential to determine if its 2030 goal is in children’s best interests, writes Robyn Wolfson Vorster.
It is Christmas time, a time for family, a time when the eyes of the nation turn compassionately towards
those children spending the holiday in care, lavishing gifts and parties on them.
This Christmas could, however, herald a national end to institutional care. But, in a country with endemic poverty, gender-based violence and crumbling family support structures, could the timing of this strategy result in additional harm to the very
children it’s trying to protect?
In November 2025, representatives from government and civil society agreed a national care reform strategy and committed to a five-year plan to strengthen families, to prevent children from entering institutions in the first place, to remove
children already in institutional care, and to close 75% of child and youth care centres (CYCCs) by 2030, beginning with a moratorium on under threes being placed in care to be implemented by November 2026.
It’s a plan based on South Africa’s prioritisation of family care for children. However, understanding the context in which deinstitutionalisation is being rolled out is essential to determine if its 2030 goal is in children’s best interests.
Living below the poverty line
In 2025, newly released South African figures showed that although poverty has diminished in the 17 years between 2006 and 2023, almost 38% of the population still live below the lower bound poverty line of R1 300 per month. Of those, over
70% are under the age of 35, with children comprising more than 43% of all poor individuals.
In 2025 gender-based violence was declared a national disaster. About 42 000 women are raped annually and teen pregnancy rates rose to 90 000 in 2024, with the Department of Social Development (DSD) indicating that 18.2% of girls become mothers
before they turn 18.
Researchers continue to report the breakdown of the South African family support structure, beginning historically with migrant labour, HIV/Aids and urbanisation, poverty, violence, absent fathers, and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, about 2.8 million children were classified as single or double orphans.
These stats are indications that the country continues to battle pervasive upstream drivers of crisis pregnancies and child abuse.
Equally worrying, downstream, the alternative care system, a child’s right enshrined in the Constitution, is broken.
Detained
In the past four months, the Centre for Child Law has documented three cases of women who were effectively detained in Gauteng hospitals because they wanted to place their child into the child protection system.
In all three cases, the mother had legally signed consent to relinquish the child. In the case of mother A, a minor who was still at school, her mother also consented as per the Children’s Act, but hospital staff refused to discharge her unless she personally took the baby home. Herself a child, she experienced humiliation and huge emotional distress, trapped in the hospital and pressured to care for a baby she had already relinquished.
Mother B had the same experience at a different hospital in the province. Despite being unemployed and struggling to raise her three children, social workers and hospital staff tried to shame and coerce her into keeping her newborn, even threatening that her other children would be removed if she failed to comply.
Mother C, a student, abandoned by the baby’s father, was told at another provincial hospital that she could only be discharged when the social workers were able to place her child.
Despite the illegality of these actions, the cases are not isolated, and when mothers are allowed to leave, their babies are often left in hospitals for prolonged periods. One child protection organisation reported that at least 30 babies were
stuck in hospitals this year with limited stimulation, bonding or attachment opportunities because the DSD failed to collect them or authorise their placement in CYCCs.
At the same time, government responses to a question asked by the Head of the Portfolio Committee for Social Development indicated that in the first three months of 2025, the National Child Protection Register recorded 99 babies who had
survived abandonment. Given that the register is notoriously out of date, the number is likely much higher.
Adoption numbers dropping
The response also revealed that in 2024, adoption numbers in South Africa had dropped to a record low, a paltry 555. Only 37 of those adoptions occurred before the child turned one.
Additionally, following decades of trying to fix the foster care system to provide emergency care for children in need, the DSD announced in 2024 that there were still over 300 000 children in the foster care system, far too many to be adequately serviced by government which continues to have a dearth of social workers.
Last year there were only 15 433 social workers in government employ, 40 000 fewer than the 2030 target of the number needed to care for vulnerable South Africans including children.
It is against this backdrop that government, along with some strategic partners, announced that it plans to end institutionalisation of children in the next five years.
It’s a bold plan based on a global imperative being driven through the UN’s 2019 Resolution on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Children, and the 2022 Kigali Declaration on Child Care and Protection Reform designed to promote family care, and as a caveat, end institutionalised care. It’s also based on sound theory. Academics universally note the negative impact on children of growing up in care, the consequential developmental deficits and how institutional care can result in many children failing to thrive.
In addition, in South Africa, family-based care is embedded in the country’s legislation and regulations. It’s widely supported whenever it’s safe and possible, as is family reunification when families have been temporarily disrupted and permanent
alternative care when primary family care is impossible.
Deinstitutionalisation is fully in keeping with the country’s core values for caring for vulnerable children.
So, it is interesting that despite the ethical problems of arguing that children should grow up in children’s homes rather than in families, the deinstitutionalisation policy document zero distributed at the November summit notes that “there is already resistance against deinstitutionalisation from several sections of South Africa”, and further that deinstitutionalisation is seen
as “more of a threat than an opportunity”.
Perhaps it is understandable that UK-based Hope and Homes, at the fulcrum of this initiative, should use such oppositional language for those questioning the plan.
Deinstitutionalisation has been rolled out in parts of the world with a history of organisations “recruiting” children into care to feed orphanage tourism or as a way of getting funding from the state or international donors. In those countries, most children reportedly have a safe family that they could return to, but they nonetheless end up in care because their families
are offered remuneration, persuaded that the child will have a better life in the institution or erroneously removed through the child protection system.
Denial of the problem
In South Africa conversely, if the practice exists, it is a rarity, and the need for alternative care for children is substantial.
Local pushback to the strategy has therefore not been because deinstitutionalisation is perceived as a threat, but because there is concern that despite extensive reviews of the economic and social factors pervasive in the country, the proponents of
the plan have failed to appreciate the extent and intransigent nature of the problems driving children into the child protection system, or to concede that alternative care options are limited.
Moreover, the DSD has historically failed to grasp the enormity of South Africa’s child protection crisis, or recognise that denial of a problem is not akin to solving it.
Truthfully, while family strengthening is essential for protecting children long term and keeping them out of institutional care, and a strategic priority that has been promoted by both government and parenting organisations such as the South African Parenting Programme Implementers Network (SAPPIN) for decades, it is fanciful to think that it is going to result in such massive and sustained social change that, within the next five years, children will no longer need to enter or remain in the child protection system.
And if it doesn’t, the burden will be on the already broken alternative care system to absorb those who cannot be accommodated in institutions, including neurodivergent children and those with physical disabilities who are disproportionately represented in current children’s homes.
Simply put, the deadlines proposed in the Care Reform summit outcomes document aren’t achievable.
The pending moratorium on under-threes is particularly alarming. To roll it out it in less than a year would require government to recruit, vet, screen and equip huge numbers of safety parents, it would need increased numbers of social workers to ensure that these children are properly cared for by the safety parents, it would necessitate urgent
efforts to fix the foster care system to allow for short term removals of children in danger and then for social workers to reunify them once interventions have made the family safe, and it would require government support for adoption to ensure
permanent placement of children who have been anonymously abandoned or consented for adoption.
Without that, the risk is that we end up with a repeat of Gauteng’s failed deinstitutionalisation pilot.
In 2023, when the first moratorium on under-threes entering care was being rolled out in Gauteng, a lack of alternative care options and communication about the plan to the SAPS and the child protection organisations tasked with placement of children resulted in the inadvertent recreation of the Christmas story, with abandoned and abused babies and toddlers being turned away from institutions that had been threatened with closure if they accepted them.
Tragically, these innocent children quite literally ended up with “no room at the inn”.
We still don’t know what happened to the affected children, but in a province still living in the shadow of the Life Esidimeni tragedy, the transition of children from admittedly imperfect but nonetheless, centralised, highly regulated, controlled care with qualified caregivers, safeguarding mechanisms and monitoring and evaluation, to non-existent or decentralised care which may be unsupervised because social workers are so overburdened, could have resulted in equally disastrous consequences, especially given its chaotic implementation.
Now, two years later, the national plan will hopefully be better co-ordinated, executed, and communicated. But with only a year until the first deadline, the question of how the model is going to cater for the numbers of under-threes in need of
care remains unanswered.
Forced to act as a gatekeeper
Failing radical changes in policy and practice, the only way to make this plan achievable in the time available is to act as a gatekeeper to children, preventing them from entering the child protection system even when it is legally permissible or
absolutely essential for their safety, as seen in Gauteng hospitals.
The upshot is that while projects in KwaZulu-Natal have shown that ending institutional care is both life-changing and attainable when properly implemented, it’s a lengthy and painstaking process. Shifting persistent socio-economic factors driving crisis pregnancies and child abuse, strengthening families, recruiting more social workers to safely reunify children and place those whose families cannot be traced in families, increasing adoption numbers and providing appropriate alternative care for children in the interim aren’t easily accomplished.
Completing it in five years, or only one for children under three, is improbable at best and at worst, perilous.
Robyn Wolfson Vorster is a child protection activist, and founder of For the Voiceless.
First published in News24 on the 24.12.2025. To quote, please cite Robyn Wolfson Vorster from For the Voiceless and that the article was first published in News24.
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Feb 19, 2025 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World
Up to 60% of South African children have seen pornography by age 10; 20% of children have been subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation online; and harmful sexual behaviours among children, including rape and incest, are at crisis levels.
It’s been two years since South Africa participated in the global Disrupting Harm survey which identified the prevalence and impact of online child sexual abuse and exploitation (OCSEA) in the country, and a year since Daily Maverick sounded the alarm about children’s early and prolonged exposure to pornography and other harms children experience online.
They are harms that government appears to be taking seriously. In 2024, when it was a participant in the first global conference on ending violence against children and signatory to the resultant Bogota Call to Action – a global commitment to protecting children from violence – South Africa’s pledge included online safety.
Also in 2024, four regulatory entities launched the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and Media Regulators Forum, designed to protect children and vulnerable groups in digital spaces; the Film and Publications Board launched a WhatsApp hotline.
Moreover, online safety was included as a theme of the 2024 “16 Days of Activism for no violence against women and children”.
But even a cursory comparison of South Africa’s commitment to those of other Bogota signatories, and an evaluation of government’s presentation to the Parliamentary Committee on social development about what it has done to prevent and mitigate online harm, raises alarm bells.
Government’s strategy, which ignores the harm of children’s exposure to pornography and includes no mention of legislative or policy reforms, but instead focuses on education and awareness raising, is a long-game approach, akin to going door-to-door to warn people of an approaching hurricane.
It might be apposite if we weren’t already in the middle of the storm.
Problematic or harmful sexual behaviours
The reports came with depressing regularity over 2024. Concerned schools, ranging from elite private schools to quintile 1 and 2 government schools, sought help with problematic or harmful sexual behaviours often enacted in public spaces, at school, on camps and tours, and after hours between pupils.
Girls caught naked and kissing each other in school bathrooms; boys and girls masturbating in public spaces, either alone or in a group; boys experimenting together sexually on school camps, including a group of boys using bottles for anal penetration; reports of groping and fingering; sexual grooming of peers; and even full sexual assault, often in public places.
While some may argue that such behaviours aren’t uncommon among teens, these reports aren’t coming from high schools. Instead, every one of these incidents involved children aged between six and 11, neither legally able to consent to sex nor to be charged with a crime because they’re under the age of criminal capacity.
In one of the most concerning stories, John* a nine-year-old boy, sexually assaulted Ella*, an 11-year-old girl. The boy was bewildered about her reluctance to participate.
In another, a boy was seen sexually assaulting preschool girls on the side of the road.
The reports aren’t isolated. Experts are concerned that harmful sexual behaviours, defined as child-on-child sexual abuse or inappropriate sexual behaviours, are at epidemic levels among children.
In the United Kingdom, 50% of sexual assaults of children reported to the police have been committed by other children. South Africa lacks these disaggregated sexual assault statistics.
But, a recent study on harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) among South African children conducted by Jelly Beanz, an organisation dedicated to helping children impacted by trauma and abuse, found that in 2016, in almost a third of South African sexual abuse cases involving children, the perpetrator was another child. If South Africa is following international trends, that percentage has increased in the last eight years.
Exposure to online pornography
The HSB cases all have a common denominator – at least one of the involved children had been exposed to online pornography prior to the incident. In its book, South African Children and Pornography, designed to help practitioners manage the pornography crisis, Jelly Beanz explain that young children are particularly affected by viewing pornography and feel compelled to either co-watch with other children or to act out what they have seen. The consequences can be tragic.
In a well-publicised story published in the Sowetan in October 2024, a boy was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after he began raping other children at age 12. His rapes included that of a 12-year-old classmate, an 11-year-old boy, a five-year-old girl and the attempted rape of an 11-year-old girl. Along with a violent family life, the boy confessed to watching pornography on his phone and then “putting what he saw into practice”.
For Edith Kriel, Managing Director of Jelly Beanz, the case epitomises an adult problem for which children are paying. Kriel lamented the institutional failure that resulted in this child not getting the help he needed to stop harming others. Social workers had an opportunity to intervene after the first rape, but misunderstood the legislated age of criminal capacity and failed to ask the right questions about how his online world was driving his behaviour.
At nine, John* had already been viewing pornography for several years. When asked about it, his heartbroken mother said that she had been aware of his pornography usage, but thought he had stopped watching.
As much victims as actors
The Harmful Sexual Behaviours study emphasises that children who commit these crimes when under 12, the age of criminal capacity, are “children at risk” and in many cases, “sad children not bad children”. Those whose behaviour originates in pornography viewing are as much victims as they are actors.
But this does not mitigate harm, and children may still end up in diversion programmes, if these are even available, and labelled a pervert or paedophile by their peers.
In at least one case, a 10-year-old boy was forced to leave his school because of bullying and name-calling from other boys and their parents after a shared and mutually initiated sexual experiment with three of his peers on a school camp.
The South African government urgently needs to acknowledge the link between pornography viewing and HSB drawn by multiple academic studies and the United Kingdom Children’s Commissioner, and act to protect children from exposure to pornography as part of its strategy to shield children from online harms. It’s critical because if South African statistics are accurate, and up to 60% of children are exposed to pornography by age 10, these incidents will not decrease without active government intervention.
Nor is HSB the only negative outcome of children viewing pornography. It is also linked to early sexual debuts in children, willingness to take more risks sexually, including anal sex, facial ejaculations, strangulation, unprotected sex and sexual violence.
A 2010 study which analysed the most watched pornography scenes found that 88% of them contained physical violence – 94% of this violence was directed towards women and in 96% of the scenes, the women portrayed pleasure when aggressed against.
In a country with such high levels of violence against women and children and such concerning rates of child pregnancies, including among children aged 10-14, policymakers cannot ignore the impact of pornography viewing.
Online exploitation
Further, exposure to pornography has been identified by frontline workers as the most significant risk factor in making children vulnerable to online child sexual abuse and exploitation (Ocsea).
In 2024, more than 100 million images or videos of children being sexually abused were found online, 98% of these show children under 13, and in January 2025, South African police arrested Darren Wilken for the possession and distribution of more than 10 million child sexual abuse images and videos. Yet, pornography viewing is not included in the government’s definition of online harm.
The online harms that government does acknowledge, including online grooming, sexting and sextortion, are equally prevalent in South Africa. A global 2024 study done by the University of Edinburgh and the Human Dignity Foundation for Childlight found that more than 300 million, or one in eight children worldwide, had been subject to online solicitation in the past 12 months. This includes unwanted sexual talk such as non-consensual sexting, unwanted sexual questions, non-consensual taking, sharing and/or exposure to sexual images and videos, and requests for unwanted sexual acts by adults or other youths.
Of the regions surveyed, southern and East Africa had the highest measured rates of online solicitation of children in the past 12 months (which they defined as online grooming, online sexual harassment, pressure to obtain images, voluntarily provided images in a statutorily impermissible relationship, unwanted/non-consensual/pressured sexting, and unwanted sexual talk). The studies they cited showed that 20.4%, or one in five children in the region had been targeted over the previous 12 months.
This study mirrored the findings of the South African version of the Disrupting Harm study which indicated that in the year prior to the survey, 19% of the 9-17-year-olds surveyed were asked “to talk about sex or sexual acts with someone when they did not want to”; 22% had been asked to share sexual information about themselves; 16% said they had been asked to share a naked photo or video of themselves; and 7% had been extorted using naked photos or images (the latter two figures are likely to be higher because these crimes are frequently underreported).
Nor are online harms exclusively related to pornography or Ocsea. In 2024, Dr Jonathan Haidt’s book, the Anxious Generation detailed the rise of phone-based children, the loss of a play-based childhood, and how it’s affecting children.
Haidt, along with other experts in this space such as Dr Jean Twenge, Dr Becky Foljambe and Professor Gloria Mark highlight in stark detail how our children’s online world has resulted in a myriad of harms ranging through depression, loneliness, self-harm and suicide, high-risk behaviours, changes to sleep, relationships and academic performance, and compulsivity – all of which are impacting on children’s working memory, ability to concentrate, emotional regulation, judgement, impulsivity, cognitive skills and ability to learn.
SA’s high-risk environment
While these are global challenges, South Africa is a particularly high-risk environment because of the saturation of children with internet-enabled devices; the absence of care for many; the lack of tech-savvy caregivers who recognise that children are no longer safe “in their own rooms” and who have actively put protective mechanisms in place; the deficiency of budget for policing and prosecution of online crimes; and the dearth of legislation and policy to protect children online.
In response to these crises, government has focused on awareness and education. In December 2024, the Department of Social Development reported to the parliamentary portfolio committee that since the country became a member of the WeProtect Global Alliance in July 2020, government has trained almost 1,000 practitioners on online safety and run several workshops for children, caregivers and educators.
The South African government’s commitment to continue with this strategy is confirmed in its Bogota pledge which states that the country will “build capacity of different stakeholders on online safety including parents, caregivers, children, frontline workers, and strengthen the curriculum in schools promoting the online safety of children by 2027”.
Awareness-raising and education are mission critical for dealing with online harms, and a key action step highlighted in the evidence-based action report arising from the global Disrupting Harm study. But, as veteran child protection activist Joan van Niekerk points out, “in the absence of any reported monitoring and evaluation, it’s impossible to say how many of South Africa’s 21 million children have been reached through each trained practitioner.”
Problematic strategy
The strategy is problematic for other reasons too.
First, it is a painstakingly slow approach to a clear and present danger. Not only is the risk to children of delayed interventions immense, but the department doesn’t have the resources to provide restorative justice and support services for the number of children already exhibiting harmful sexual behaviours.
Equally, South Africa has neither the capacity in policing services nor the justice system to be able to assist children groomed and targeted online, often after being exposed to pornography.
Second, an education and awareness approach inadvertently places the burden of responsibility on children to keep themselves safe. Not only is this a devolution and avoidance of the state’s duty of care for vulnerable children, but it places children in an impossible situation.
The Disrupting Harm survey consistently found that children were aware of risks online and professed that they wouldn’t take them, but still did. For example, more than 50% of children said that it was very risky to talk to someone on the internet that they hadn’t met before, but equally, more than 50% reported that they had done so; 32% had shared their personal details including full name, address or phone number despite knowing that this could result in harm.
Kriel illustrates using the story of a 7-year-old who was exposed to pornography after he searched for the words “bum” and “boys peeing”, despite having signed a contract agreeing not to search for anything inappropriate on the school iPads. In response, the school blamed this Grade 1 for “breaking his promise”, thus deferring its fundamental responsibility to protect children when they access school tech.
As experts attest, children’s brains are still developing through childhood, and they cannot always predict the consequences of their actions. Equally, as studies are confirming, children who have been shielded from risk “in the real world” are often far more compelled to take risks online.
But most importantly, we are pitting children against the pornography industry that in 2023 was worth $1.1-billion in America alone; against programmed backdoors and sophisticated algorithms designed to trap children into viewing pornography; against big tech’s lack of accountability for allowing children’s natural curiosity about sex and sexuality to result in them being exposed to all genres of pornography, including rape and snuff pornography; against sexual predators; and against criminal syndicates preying on children’s need for belonging and identity and so effective that in one study, two-thirds of the 6,000 Gen Z youth and young adults surveyed across six countries had been sextorted.
State responsibility
It isn’t a fair fight, and we cannot make it children’s responsibility to stay safe. For this reason, pledges from other countries place the onus on the state to protect children.
For example, the United Kingdom’s commitment is to “international leadership to prevent child sexual exploitation and abuse in all its forms, including online child sexual abuse, through the implementation of legislation and the sharing of knowledge and insight with key partners across the world. This includes responding to the increasing threat of AI-generated child sexual abuse and exploitation and supporting innovative work from across the tech sector to use AI to detect and prevent this harm”.
Zimbabwe’s pledge includes legislation designed to protect children in the online space.
It is also the reason why Australia’s recently enacted ban on social media for children under 16 has no penalties for children or caregivers if they contravene the restrictions, but places the burden of responsibility squarely on technology companies to ensure that they do not permit underage use.
Failure to comply – as with the EU regulations, and the UK’s Online Safety Act which will be enacted in 2025 and is designed to protect children from exposure to pornography, self-harm and violent content – will result in huge financial penalties for the companies who transgress. In the case of the UK, that is up to 10% of their global revenue.
But perhaps the biggest problem with government’s approach is that, as with its other strategies to stop child violence, it represents a failure to use the power afforded to it to make systemic and societal change.
Suggested actions
The suggested action items from the Disrupting Harm study include governments investing in child protection services, budgeting for law reform and policy development, and financially capacitating first responders such as increasing the number and expertise of practitioners, dedicated police services including in cybercrimes, and child-friendly justice.
Further, it recommends using legislation amendments, new legislation and policy to address Ocsea and exposure to pornography.
Frustratingly, the South African Law Reform Commission has already done the work to draft the necessary legislation. As highlighted by Daily Maverick in December 2023, recommendations to protect children from exposure to pornography and other harms online have been gathering dust for the past three years.
No one in government has stated publicly why the legislation has never been actioned. But, if the minister of social development and the new minister of justice are committed to online safety for children, introducing the legislation to Parliament would be the most effective way to achieve this.
In a country with a myriad of child protection challenges and profound levels of exposure to violence, keeping children safer online could significantly minimise their risk of harm.
Surely it should be everyone’s goal? But achieving it requires government to add to its current education and awareness strategy, to enact the drafted legislation most likely to protect children, and ultimately, to capacitate the child protection system.
Does it have the motivation and political will to do so? Only time will tell.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 19.02.2025
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Dec 8, 2023 | Abandonment
Gauteng Social Development’s October ban of baby savers as a place to relinquish babies followed 10 years of advocacy by civil society to prevent unsafe abandonment. Government terms it ‘child protection’, but given the number of children dying or left disabled when babies are abandoned in rubbish dumps, disgusting pit latrines or the open veld, who is this protecting? Instead, baby savers should be considered an essential service.
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In October 2023, the Gauteng Department of Social Development (DSD) issued a directive to Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCCs), as well as private temporary safe care homes, declaring all baby savers in the province illegal, ordering them to close with immediate effect, and threatening legal action for those organisations that do not comply.
Baby savers are mechanical boxes attached to CYCCs, places of safety or crisis pregnancy centres where a mother who is experiencing a crisis pregnancy, who cannot or will not raise the child and isn’t able to place that child into the child protection system, can safely relinquish the child as an alternative to unsafe abandonment. Based on the ancient practice of foundling wheels, they are designed to provide a last resort safe haven for vulnerable infants.
Dr Yolande van der Hyde, a senior pathologist at the Observatory Forensic Pathology Institute, recreated an autopsy she had just performed on a dead abandoned baby. She said that many abandoned children were not born dead, but took a breath before they died.
South Africa has the distinction of having the first modern baby saver in the world. Situated at the Door of Hope, it’s been operational since 1999. Based in Gauteng, the baby saver, which has rescued 270 infants over the last 24 years, is one of those ordered to close.
No response
At the time of publishing, the DSD had failed to respond to questions posed to it about its motivation for issuing the directive, the extent and impact of abandonment and DSD’s strategy for preventing it. However, its position has been well articulated, both in the directive and interviews given by Yvonne Deonarin, Director Children Protection Services: Gauteng DSD on radio, television and news media since news of the directive broke in mid-October.
In a nutshell, the department’s position is that safe relinquishment through baby savers:
- Is a form of abandonment, which is a criminal offence in the Children’s Act.
- Encourages abandonment.
- Is not in the best interests of a child.
- Denies the child’s right to a name, family, social, cultural and religious identity.
- “Silences the voice” of the child’s biological father.
- Creates a caseload of “abandoned children”.
- Is linked to illegal adoption and trafficking.
It further argues that baby savers are unnecessary because babies can be relinquished at the DSD’s offices, at clinics, hospitals and police stations, and that it has no knowledge of the organisations running baby savers.
They are important points, but to date, no one has been able to debate them publicly. Nor has the department veered off script to respond to any of the counter-arguments raised by child protection experts from Baby Savers South Africa (BSSA), the Teddy Bear Clinic, and Women & Men Against Child Abuse. The issues are therefore worth interrogating, particularly because what is missing from the department’s argument is as significant as what is included.
Notably absent is an appreciation of the desperation of abandoning parents, and recognition of the extent and impact of abandonment.
The department has never publicly acknowledged that more abandoned babies die than survive, and that those who survive are often left physically scarred or with trauma-related psychological challenges. In Deonarin’s recent interviews she also downplayed the numbers of babies surviving abandonment. Stating that the Gauteng DSD only had records of 13 babies abandoned in the province between April and September, she said that the department was not aware of the “thousands of babies being abandoned annually”.
Deonarin’s comment insinuates that the numbers are either overstated, or that the abandoned children are being received by baby savers but not placed into the child protection system, but instead trafficked through illegal adoption for financial gain.
However, the department knows the origins of the statistic. It’s derived from Dr Dee Blackie’s 2013 master’s thesis on abandonment. Blackie used figures provided by child protection organisations such as child welfare to calculate that 3,500 babies survived abandonment in 2010.
In the absence of any other formal research on the topic, including by the DSD, Blackie’s statistic has been cited ever since.
Nor is it likely to be inaccurate. In March 2022, in response to a question posed by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Social Development about how many babies had been abandoned in the years since Blackie’s research, national DSD sought to answer the question by conducting informal research across CPOs in each province, rather than referring to Part A of the child protection register, which should include an accurate tally of the number of babies surviving abandonment in the period.
A baby saver, also referred to as a baby box or baby safe, is a structure built into a wall where mothers can leave infants as a safe alternative to baby abandonment. (Photo: Whitney Rosenberg)
Babies that survived abandonment
Numbers provided were incomplete (there was no data from the Northwest Province, and limited information from others such as KwaZulu-Natal). But the combined total of 10,500 babies that survived abandonment over the period is substantial. Moreover, the Minister of Social Development told Parliament that 1,024 babies had been abandoned from April 2019 to March 2021 alone.
There’s no minimising the problem. Deonarin herself admitted in a November 2022 TV interview that “the prevalence of child abandonment is on the increase” and that those abandonments included babies “put into packets or dropped off in a nearby field”.
It’s also been flagged by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In 2022, after the committee received South Africa’s five-yearly report from government, and shadow reports from civil society, it specifically highlighted abandonment and its prevalence on its list of concerns needing more investigation.
In 2023 to date, there were 86 stories written about abandoned babies. Two thirds (57) were found dead, in rubbish bins, pit toilets, in buckets, on train tracks, in plastic bags, the veld, on the street, in an oven, in the mouths of animals, and in one devastating headline, strangled and being eaten by a dog.
But while the number of children who survive abandonment every year is significant, until government recognises how fatal unsafe abandonment can be, it will always understate abandonment figures.
One of the unanswered questions posed to Deonarin for this article was “how many abandoned babies die annually?” Her silence wasn’t unexpected. The number of abandoned babies that die is not formally tracked by the SAPS or through forensic pathology labs.
As a result, these children are completely invisible.
Completely invisible
Child protection activist Luke Lamprecht however says that when he was researching abandonment, one Johannesburg mortuary recorded 20 dead abandoned babies every month for every six found alive. Lamprecht’s figure, amounting to an intake in one mortuary of 240 babies per year dying through unsafe abandonment, infanticide or neonaticide, was confirmed by Dr Jena Stuart, Chief Specialist Forensic Pathologist at Gauteng Department of Health’s Forensic Pathology Services. She says that the problem is “spiralling out of control” and placing the health sector in crisis.
A 2009 child homicide study completed for the Medical Research Council included 454 children under the age of five who died of unnatural causes. Of these children, 233 (53%) died in the first six days of life, prompting the researchers to conclude that in South Africa, children under five were most likely to die of unnatural causes in the first six days of life and that the country has some of the highest rates of neonaticide (murder of children within the first 28 days of life: 19.6 per 100,000 live births) and infanticide (murder of babies under one: 28.4 per every 100,000 live births) in the world. In the study, 85% of the neonates died because they were abandoned in the open veld, rubbish dumps and dustbins, toilets, rivers and dams or were buried in shallow graves.
A recent Carte Blanche feature on dead abandoned babies included an interview with bone specialist Dr Roxanne Thornton, who establishes cause of death in the often decomposed bodies of abandoned babies. She identified illegal abortions, concealment of birth and infanticide as common causes of death for abandoned babies. Tragically, the babies she examines can be as old as nine months. But even then, their deaths are seldom investigated.
In the feature, Dr Yolande van der Hyde, a senior pathologist at the Observatory Forensic Pathology Institute, recreated an autopsy she had just performed on a dead abandoned baby. She said that many abandoned children were not born dead, but took a breath before they died.
But government has removed the word “abandoned” from its crime records and pathology reports. These babies are now all classified as stillborn even when there is evidence that the child was born alive and then died, or where there was blunt or sharp force trauma.
One abandoned baby survives, two die
Following their reclassification, an investigative reporter analysing the number of “stillborns” in pathology reports in Gauteng confirmed Lamprecht’s findings that in the province, for every abandoned baby that survives, two die.
Nor is the prevalence of death specific to Gauteng. Media stories from across the country show that in 2023 to date, there were 86 stories written about abandoned babies. Two thirds (57) were found dead, in rubbish bins, pit toilets, in buckets, on train tracks, in plastic bags, the veld, on the street, in an oven, in the mouths of animals, and in one devastating headline, strangled and being eaten by a dog.
These stats and stories show the deadly impact of unsafe abandonment. But the thousands that survive seldom escape unscathed either. Instead, they suffer debilitating physical and psychological injuries. It’s hardly surprising, many of the 29 children whose abandonment and survival was documented in the media in 2023 were found in drains, in municipal rubbish bins, in pit latrines and in plastic bags, including a baby rescued in Gauteng’s Sedibeng municipality during the 16 days of activism for no violence against women and children, after being sealed in a plastic bag and thrown into a river.
CYCCs and Places of Safety report that many abandoned babies have physical or psychological disabilities. These include brain injuries due to oxygen deprivation, cerebral palsy, autism, ADHD, cognitive delays, limbs and other extremities missing due to rat bites, damage to lungs due to exposure after a child was abandoned outside in winter or at night, from near drowning or breathing in faecal matter when abandoned in pit latrines, tremors due to being abandoned at the side of a highway or children plagued with night terrors because they were left in dark drains for extended periods of time, or even buried alive.
Not surprisingly, the department doesn’t acknowledge these cases. If it recognised the risk of children’s death or disability following unsafe abandonment and did not act to prevent it, it would be acting negligently at best, and potentially, even criminally.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Closure of baby savers in Gauteng will lead to more unsafe abandonments and deaths — experts
Nonetheless, the DSD is on the same page as child protection activists about many things related to unsafe abandonment. Everyone agrees that first prize is for children to be raised in their nuclear or extended families, that it’s not optimal for children to be robbed of their cultural identities, heritage or relationship with their biological fathers. They even agree that abandonment is rife and that if societal factors such as poverty, unemployment, sexual violence, teen pregnancies and the breakdown of extended family exist, so will abandonment.
Where they disagree is about if unsafe abandonment should be prevented at all costs, whether government’s efforts to stop crisis pregnancies and assist women to place their children into the child protection system are working, and if women can relinquish their babies at all DSD offices, clinics, hospitals and police stations. Activists further query if baby savers rob fathers of rights because women who abandon typically report that they’ve been sexually assaulted or abandoned by the biological father. Most importantly, civil society disagrees that abandonment is an “easy option” or that abandoning parents would abandon if they had alternatives.
Underestimating desperation is as dangerous as ignoring the extent and impact of abandonment.
Pervasive factors driving abandonment
Frustratingly, despite being aware of the factors driving abandonment – Deonarin listed many in her November 2022 interview – the department seems curiously lacking in empathy about the despair they can cause.
Moreover, government doesn’t understand that no one would deliberately risk arrest, prison, hurting or killing their child, or sacrificing any future relationship with them if they felt they had options.
Recognising that people abandon as a last resort when they cannot or will not raise a child, and when placing the child into the child protection system is either not possible or government fails to assist them, refutes the argument that safe relinquishment is an enabler allowing parents to avoid parental responsibilities. Equally, if abandonment is a certainty, it’s inevitable that the child will be separated from the extended family, from culture and from its origins.
People who use savers see abandonment as their only choice, making assertions that baby savers promote abandonment spurious. They’re instead a last resort to stop death.
Armed with that knowledge, government should recognise that banning baby savers to stop abandonment is akin to government banning lifeguards to stop people drowning.
Even when it recognises desperation, the DSD still deems savers unnecessary, arguing that parents can relinquish at DSD offices, hospitals, clinics and police stations instead. Worryingly though, some women report being “chased away” when they have tried.
Deonarin calls these “isolated incidents”. However, the Gauteng DSD was unable to provide standard operating procedures for safe relinquishment at these institutions, and when BSSA asked for them, it was allegedly told that the department was in the process of writing them.
‘Go home and parent’
In the interim, incidents of women seeking help being told to “go home and parent” abound. As recently as November, there were two separate incidents in Gauteng on the same day.
In the East Rand of Johannesburg, a desperate mother tried to relinquish her baby at a police station because she had not received help from the department. When the SAPS took the baby to the local DSD offices to get it placed into the child protection system, the department ordered the police to arrest the mother because, despite the DSD’s directive, the police were told that she wasn’t allowed to relinquish her child to them.
On the same day, in the West Rand of Johannesburg, a care worker from a place of safety escorted a mother to her local DSD offices because she wanted to place her four-month-old baby into care. The social workers apparently told her “she didn’t look poor” and sent her away. Even after a senior DSD manager intervened, the mother was told she couldn’t put her baby into the place of safety she had chosen. She left the offices with the baby. The child has since been placed into care, but without intervention, she might have abandoned her baby.
The DSD’s concerns about the potential illegality of baby savers based on the Children’s Act and the risk of trafficking through baby savers are however valid. It’s why advocacy groups have been working for years to amend the Children’s Act to allow for safe relinquishment. In March 2022, Dr Whitney Rosenberg from BSSA, whose PhD is focused on safe relinquishment, presented to the Social Development Parliamentary Portfolio Committee and explained children’s constitutional right to life and the importance of acting in their best interests. She showed how abandonment statistics necessitate a solution to end unsafe abandonment, and the impact on children of government’s failure to act.
She then presented potential amendments to the wording of the Children’s Act to be incorporated into the Children’s Amendment Bill (CAB). These would legalise safe relinquishment through baby savers while ensuring that unsafe abandonment remains a criminal offence.
But the amendments were not made in 2022. The committee’s priority was instead to pass the bill in time to meet the November 2022 deadline imposed by the North Gauteng High Court. The order compelled the DSD to provide a comprehensive legal solution to the foster care crisis, thus preventing the Minister of Social Development from being deemed to have acted unconstitutionally. The committee therefore decided to only pass the 12 foster-care related clauses, rejecting the remaining 126 clauses of the bill and effectively removing the option for new provisions in the Act to legalise baby savers.
Despite this, the department still missed its deadline, and the order had to be extended for another 12 months.
The committees’ plan was to include the remaining 126 CAB clauses in a committee bill to ensure that extensive work done on them through national and provincial public consultations wasn’t in vain. But calamitously, it discovered in May 2023 that it had been given inaccurate advice by the parliamentary law advisor who told parliamentarians that if the committee rejected the remaining clauses in the bill, they could still work on them as a committee bill.
Advocate Charmaine van der Merwe, the Senior Parliamentary Legal Advisor in the Legislative Drafting Unit, clarified that the committee should have divided the bill into two, and then passed the clauses related to foster care. This would have allowed it to deliberate on the other clauses thereafter.
Instead, when the committee rejected the 126 clauses, they were taken “off parliament’s radar”.
While the number of children who survive abandonment every year is significant, until government recognises how fatal unsafe abandonment can be, it will always understate abandonment figures. (Photo: City Press / Media 24 / Gallo)
Upshot: restart baby saver legislation
The upshot is that work on the remaining clauses and suggested provisions related to baby savers must be restarted from scratch. Moreover, if the committee revives the process now but doesn’t have time to introduce the bill in the sixth Parliament, it cannot be carried over until the seventh Parliament. The result is that the bill, along with proposed new safe relinquishment clauses, has been shelved until a new committee is formed after the 2024 elections.
The state law advisor was so appalled by the advice given that she felt duty-bound to report her colleague, an action opposed by the ANC members of the committee.
Given that the DSD was privy to these discussions and aware of the plans to amend the act (and that its inability to fix foster care led to the delay effecting the changes), it seems disingenuous for the Gauteng department to act now to close baby savers, knowing legislative changes are pending.
Equally disingenuous is its continued assertion that it’s unfamiliar with the organisations running baby savers. BSSA met with a senior director from the Gauteng DSD on 4 October and explained in detail the vision for baby savers, its member organisations, the CPOs working with each saver to ensure that children placed in savers are immediately put into the child protection system, what processes they use when a baby comes through the saver, as well as the plan, also presented to parliament, for BSSA to become a regulatory body for savers.
Acknowledging the risk of trafficking through unregulated savers, BSSA’s proposal is to register all savers who work with accredited CPOs and follow the processes dictated by the Children’s Act. This would ensure that every child placed in a saver is put into the child protection system. Equally, any saver not following the procedures would be flagged and suspended, pending compliance, or closed.
At the meeting’s end, the DSD and BSSA agreed to pursue ways of working together. But, on the same day, the DSD issued the directive to ban baby savers and make their activities illegal.
Since most baby savers are run by places of safety or CYCCs, if they defy the directive, they risk legal action, loss of funding and having their accreditation removed. But if they close, unsafe abandonment, which will continue unabated, will result in even more babies dying or being maimed. If savers are driven underground, the risk of trafficking, minimal when savers are regulated, could also become real.
Banning savers to prevent trafficking may ironically result in trafficking increasing.
Going upstream to stop abandonment at its source: addressing gender-based violence and prevention of crisis pregnancies should minimise abandonment numbers. As should options counselling and, when they are finally drafted, the implementation of safe relinquishment standard operating procedures for clinics, hospitals, police stations and DSD offices, especially if the DSD accompanies them with training, and includes the number of children relinquished into care as a performance indicator for DSD social workers.
But, government prevention and intervention programmes lack urgency and effectiveness, as attested by abandonment stats. And societal circumstances in our country and resultant desperation mean there is no end to abandonment in sight.
It’s therefore time to deal with the reality of abandonment rather than pretending that the savers are the genesis of the problem and that if abandonment numbers aren’t tracked and managed, abandonment isn’t happening.
Ignoring this scourge won’t allow government to escape the consequences if it fails to end it.
Baby savers an ‘essential service’
To quote Dr Sheheda Omar from the Teddy Bear Clinic, when you acknowledge that women who abandon feel that they have no other option, and that most abandoned babies die, it makes baby savers an “essential service”. Reinforcing that the right to life always trumps the right to identity, Omar explains that if you accept that the children placed in baby savers were going to be abandoned, not raised or placed in the child protection system, avoiding death, disability or psychological damage will always be in the child’s best interests.
It’s also in the best interests of government. Now that the UNCRC has flagged abandonment as a reporting issue, government will be required in terms of the country’s treaty obligations to track abandonments (including those that result in death) and to show progress in minimising unsafe abandonments. Moreover, if the department deliberately denies children their inalienable rights to life and dignity, they could be deemed to have acted unconstitutionally.
Government therefore needs to withdraw its directive and work with baby savers across the country to ensure that all savers are registered with BSSA and that the processes outlined in the act for placing a child into the child protection system are followed by those running savers. Further, it should expedite amendments to the Children’s Act to make safe relinquishment legal.
In the interim though, DSD intransigence is costing many of our most vulnerable their lives. It seems incomprehensible that government must be compelled to save the lives of infants, but until it ends this perpetration of violence against those with no voices to protest, the 16 days of activism for no violence against women and children is a farce. DM
First published in the Daily Maverick: 08.12.2023
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Feb 26, 2023 | Abandonment
It’s been four years since Namibia legalised ‘safe relinquishment’. This followed government, civil society and the ruling party’s youth and women’s leagues declaring child abandonment a national crisis when 13 babies were found dead every month. By contrast, despite South Africa’s exponentially bigger problem, its government opposes legislation to end unsafe abandonment. It begs the question, do South African authorities really believe that every child has a constitutional right to life, or are the lives of Namibian babies more important than ours?
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Namibia began 2023 with a campaign to inform women of their right to safely relinquish a child that they cannot care for.
South Africa started 2023 the same way it ended 2022, with soaring numbers of abandonments, media reports indicating that for every child that survives abandonment, at least one, but as many as two, die, abandoning mothers being arrested despite being failed by authorities when they attempt to put their children into the child protection system, and no approved plan to minimise or mitigate the impact of unsafe abandonment.
By contrast, the Namibian campaign is a follow-up to its government declaring child abandonment a national crisis and a resultant 2019 change to legislation allowing for the safe relinquishment of a child that parents chose not to raise.
Safe relinquishment is defined as the safe, usually anonymous, surrender or placement of a child into a baby saver, or with a designated safe haven provider. Certain criteria must be met for the child to be safely relinquished, including that the child be below a certain age, and free from abuse, neglect or malnutrition.
The number of babies that were being abandoned prior to Namibia’s legislative change is unknown. But, in her 2021 article in the African Human Rights Law Journal on curbing unsafe baby abandonment, Dr Whitney Rosenberg, whose doctoral thesis is on global practices for the safe relinquishment of babies, described how in 2008 staff at the water works in Namibia’s capital Windhoek reported 13 babies were dumped or flushed down toilets every month.
Although Namibian abandonment statistics were hard to access, Rosenberg highlighted widespread concern expressed across the Namibian government and the ruling party about the prevalence and impact of child abandonment.
The need for intervention was voiced by the departments of Home Affairs, whose minister stressed children’s right to life as protected in article 6 of the Namibian constitution; Health, whose deputy minister emphasised the need to train health care workers to deal more sensitively with pregnant teens; and Gender Equality and Child Welfare, whose minister articulated the need to provide support and services for desperate pregnant women. Parliament, Women’s Action for Development (WAD), the SWAPO Party Women’s Council and the SWAPO Party Youth League all called for increased government action to combat unsafe abandonment.
Combined government and civil society pressure led to the 2019 promulgation of the country’s Child Care and Protection Act which included a clause prohibiting the prosecution of women who relinquish their babies safely at a prescribed location (such as a police station, hospital or place of safety), and whose baby shows no signs of harm.
Significantly, this law, which decriminalises the safe relinquishment of babies, was Namibia’s first departure from child-focused legislation that it inherited from South Africa, and was also driven by a need to decolonise its legislation and create child-related laws that are relevant in Africa.
Despite the change in law, the BBC reported that 140 babies were still abandoned unsafely across Namibia between 2018 and 2022. This prompted its government to initiate the 2023 awareness campaign encouraging women to make use of baby savers or relinquish their babies safely with authorities.
SA’s different approach
Although Namibia and South Africa are neighbours, South Africa’s approach to abandonment could not be more different.
During the 2021 and 2022 hearings for the Children’s Amendment Bill, South African civil society painted a bleak picture of unsafe abandonment in the country, and petitioned Parliament to include clauses into the Bill to allow safe relinquishment.
Its submissions included detailed changes to the wording of the Children’s Act and consequential amendments which would legalise the use of baby savers provided the baby was under one and showed no signs of abuse or neglect.
In the Gauteng hearings on the bill, the chairperson of the portfolio committee for social development who, along with many of her colleagues, was visibly moved by the stories of abandoned children who died or were maimed through unsafe abandonment, asked activists “to stop telling these sad stories, they are touching, I’m telling you”.
She and the committee then invited Dr Rosenberg to present on proposed safe relinquishment legislation in March 2022.
Within months, however, the committee had decided to reject most of the clauses in the Bill to focus exclusively on foster care. All discussions about safe relinquishment were also shelved, and despite commitments that the remainder of the clauses would become a committee bill, nine months later and the bill is yet to reappear on the committee’s agenda.
Even if Parliament does reopen discussions about ending unsafe abandonment, it probably won’t get any support from government.
Unlike Namibia, neither the executive, nor the ANC woman’s or youth leagues have made statements about the crisis of child abandonment or the need to save lives. Nor has it ever been on an agenda during Child Protection Week or the 16 Days of Activism for no violence against women and children.
Baby murder rate
This is despite South Africa reportedly having among the highest rates of neonaticide (murder of children within the first 28 days of life: 19.6 per 100,000 live births) and infanticide (murder of babies under one: 28.4 per every 100,000 live births).
The same Medical Research Council study found that children under 5 in South Africa were most likely to die of unnatural causes during the first six days of life as a result of unsafe abandonment.
Nevertheless, the Department of Social Development responded to questions posed by the committee in March 2022 about ending unsafe abandonment by stating that legalising life-saving interventions would be unconstitutional:
“The Children’s Amendment Bill did not make provision for safe abandonment of children nor does it seek to decriminalise safe abandonment. The matter arose as part of the public hearings. If it has to be considered; such consideration will be unconstitutional as it will be in contravention of Section 28 of the Constitution. According to the Constitution of the Republic; children must be protected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse and degradation which are also reiterated in the definition of care in the Principal Act (Children’s Act 38/2005) where a child must be protected from maltreatment, abuse, neglect, degradation, exploitation and any other physical, emotional or moral harm and hazards. Therefore decriminalisation of abandonment will continue to put children’s lives [at risk].”
In her presentation to the committee, Rosenberg countered this argument emphasising (as the Namibian government did) that the child’s constitutional right to life and dignity should trump all other rights, and further, per Section 28(2) of the constitution, that the best interests of the child are paramount in all decisions regarding the child.
She also refuted the department’s claim that legalising safe relinquishment amounts to legalising abandonment. Unsafe abandonment, which epitomises the maltreatment, neglect, abuse and degradation that the department wants to prevent, would remain a criminal offence. If however the mother could not raise the child and was not able to place it into the child protection system, her act of safely relinquishing the child into an accredited baby saver would no longer be a crime.
Legalising safe relinquishment is thus designed, wherever possible, to stop unsafe abandonment which could result in disfigurement and psychological harm, or death.
Prevention
Where Rosenberg and the DSD do agree is about the need to prevent abandonment.
According to the department, its position is to strengthen prevention and early intervention programmes to identify and support pregnant mothers and inform them of “alternatives to abandonment such as termination of pregnancy, giving a child up for adoption or placing a child in alternative care (foster care or child and youth care centres). Early identification of mother at risk upon delivery of the baby must be done and such mothers assessed for appropriate referrals and immediate counselling upon giving birth to avoid abandonment of babies. Communities at large must also be educated about dangers of abandonment and support required by mothers of newborn babies.”
Whilst concurring that prevention is critical to saving lives, activists contend that while the circumstances driving abandonment exist, such as poverty, unemployment, gender-based violence, patriarchy, rampant teen pregnancies, and the restrictive legislation that prevents under 18s and foreigners from placing their children into the child protection system, abandonment will never be eliminated.
They further argue that, across all levels, government has proved very poor at the early identification of at-risk women, providing counselling and support, and assisting mothers to exercise options other than raising their child. And, they argue, the situation has become worse over the last year since the department made this policy statement.
Case studies
The failure is painfully illustrated by the stories of four mothers from four provinces, all experiencing a crisis pregnancy and trying to seek help.
In October 2022, a 23-year-old mother from Veralum, KwaZulu Natal abandoned her three-month-old baby girl next to a stream. Her baby was clothed, and she was left with a nappy bag containing nappies, a dummy and a bottle of milk, along with a note explain why her mother abandoned her:
“Hi, You might be wondering why I dumped my baby, don’t wonder, just help her if you can or call authorities but don’t judge me. I have spoken twice with social workers they delaying to assist. I know this looks bad but I had no option. The system is fragile and we can’t even abort safely anymore. Hospitals have strict rules.” (sic)
Despite the child being in good health when found, her mother was arrested for child abandonment after she handed herself in to police following a furore that erupted on social media. She was charged and released on R500 bail.
In response, the KwaZulu-Natal MEC of social development Nonhlanhla Khoza, who cited the Veralum child’s story with two others in which babies narrowly survived unsafe abandonment: one where a newborn baby boy was left to drown in a pit latrine in northern KwaZulu-Natal, and another, in Newcastle, where a child was thrown out of a hospital window, said that it “was devastating to see such despicable incidents of dumping of children”.
The MEC then insisted that mothers have “a lot of options” when facing a crisis pregnancy: “We encourage parents who are unable to care for their children to seek help at a clinic, hospital or the department. We have a lot of options made available by our government to ensure that we safeguard the children and we want to urge parents not to resort to dumping children regardless of situations they face.”
She painstakingly detailed the process that authorities follow. A clinic refers a mom to a social worker, options counselling occurs, a safety and risk assessment is conducted for the child, followed by the child’s removal to temporary safe care in a family or child and youth care centre. Finally, a care plan for reunification is developed. Urging mothers to approach the department if they are in crisis, she threatened that abandoning mothers would “face the might of the law”.
It sounds constructive, except that the MEC was patently ignoring the mother’s protest that the system doesn’t work. It’s a depressingly common narrative.
In the Western Cape, Amanda Jones, a volunteer from the Helderberg, Baby Saver, had to threaten the Department Of Social Development with charges of culpable homicide if they did not allocate a social worker to a mother experiencing a crisis pregnancy who was at high risk of abandoning her baby.
Aphiwe* was adamant she did not want her baby. She told Jones that she was revolted by the child moving in her womb. She had tried to abort her baby three times over the course of the pregnancy, the final time at 37 weeks when she again failed, but her attempt resulted in an infection. Yet. at 39 weeks, regardless of the danger, she was still talking about trying to abort her child a fourth time.
The baby’s father told her he didn’t care what happened to the baby, and it was her problem. He threatened to block her if she kept contacting him.
When Aphiwe eventually went to the local clinic in her third trimester, she described being “chased away” by the nursing sister who told her that they didn’t have time for people like her who didn’t know what they wanted, and came so late in the pregnancy to get care. Aphiwe then sought help from a local GP who diagnosed a serious infection from the failed late-term abortion. He gave her medication, but although he said that the infection could be life threatening for the baby, did not book her into hospital.
After weeks of trying to get help for Aphiwe and her baby, it took Jones’s email begging the department to intervene and threatening to press charges if anything happened to Aphiwe’s baby, for it to get a child welfare social worker allocated to her case to help her book into hospital and place her baby into the child protection system.
Jones specifically requested that Aphiwe’s file contain a note stating that the hospital should not give the baby to her mother post-birth because she was at high risk for harming the child.
Despite this, in Aphiwe’s words, the child welfare social worker assigned to her case told her that, “I should not give the baby up for adoption because it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life… If I do, I will never have peace and nothing will ever go according [to plan] with my life.”
The social worker then told her she may be bewitched and should visit her church for help.
Further, despite Aphiwe’s hospital admittance form stating the baby was to be adopted and the clear message given to the social worker that she may hurt her child, Aphiwe’s baby girl was handed to her after she was born. Aphiwe was placed on a chair outside the delivery room and instructed to breastfeed her child before they would allocate her a bed for her post-birth recovery.
Had she been discharged with her daughter, Aphiwe’s baby may have become another heartbreaking abandonment statistic or story. Mercifully though, Jones, dismayed at the child welfare social worker’s approach to the case, obtained help from another child protection organisation that removed the child. Aphiwe’s baby is now in the loving care of a temporary safe care parent.
The outcome could have been very different. In another troublingly similar story, a mother in Gauteng who also did not want her child was forced to breastfeed and care for her newborn in hospital for three days while the hospital blocked efforts from the temporary safe care parent to collect him. This was despite the mother also being deemed high risk for abandonment.
The safety parent’s relief at finally being handed the baby boy was short-lived. A medical checkup shortly after Thando* was placed in her care showed that the baby had a fractured skull.
The hospital’s insistence that his mother parent him almost cost Thando his life.
Shortly after the Veralum mom’s arrest for child abandonment, another safety parent, this time in the Eastern Cape, sat in a car with a young mother who had just confessed to abandoning her newborn daughter. The story of a baby girl left behind a fast-food restaurant at night had made it into the media in their hometown and Lorraine* had read it with dismay. She knew immediately that she had spoken to the abandoning mommy a week before.
During their discussion, Nkululeko* had told Lorraine that she had hidden her pregnancy and didn’t want anyone to know about the new baby. She was adamant that she would neither identify the birth father nor raise the child.
Lorraine is not a statutory social worker and cannot take a child into the child protection system. She therefore referred the mom to the local DSD, warning them that Nkululeko was terrified of anyone finding out about the pregnancy and that they should not ask questions until they had her baby in temporary safe care. Heedless, the DSD social workers pushed for details about Nkululeko, her family and the birth father. They then told Lorraine that she had disappeared and would no longer answer their calls.
The day after the referral, news broke that a baby girl had been abandoned the night before.
Although Nkululeko’s baby survived, Lorraine was appalled. Not only had Nkululeko felt she had no option but to abandon her baby after getting assistance from the DSD, but Lorraine knew she had to counsel her to turn herself in to police.
Nkululeko was arrested and charged with abandonment.
There is a small glimmer of hope in this story. At court, Nkululeko was released on her own recognisance, and after counselling, was reunited with her daughter who she has chosen to raise.
But she still faces criminal charges. She is back in court this month to see what the penalty will be for her crime.
All four stories have a common link, the singular lack of assistance for women experiencing a crisis pregnancy from hospitals, government social workers and the DSD. Without the intervention of volunteers and temporary safety parents, these babies could have died or been permanently estranged from their birth families.
The stories belie the MEC’s promise that birth mothers have a lot of options. Conversely, they show that government interventions often drive mothers to abandonment rather than preventing it.
And despite the promises and her threats, unsafe abandonment continues unabated, especially in KwaZulu Natal.
In January 2023, another baby was abandoned about 15km from where the Veralum baby was found in Phoenix, this time on the side of a highway, wrapped in a plastic bag. Babies were also found on an electrical box in Margate, outside a house, also in Margate, in a construction site in Port Shepstone, and at a clinic in Durban.
Nadene Grabham from Baby Savers SA says that in January and the first two days of February alone, there were 10 media reports of babies abandoned unsafely. Half of the babies were found dead: in stormwater drains, on dumping sites and on the street wrapped in plastic bags.
Although all forms of abandonment, including safe relinquishment, are still illegal in South Africa, Grabham says that 12 babies have been safely relinquished into baby savers so far this year. All survived and were immediately placed into the child protection system.
It’s hard to argue that there is no crisis. It is even harder to argue that government interventions are sufficient to end unsafe abandonment. It’s hardest to argue that it would be unconstitutional to pass legislation that saves the lives of unwanted babies and prevents the physical and psychological trauma of unsafe abandonment.
Bottom line is that safe relinquishment saves lives. But perhaps, as statistics and anecdotal evidence show, in South Africa, unlike Namibia, these little lives just aren’t that valuable.
*Names changed to protect their identities.
This article was first published in the Daily Maverick: 26.02.2023
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by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jan 10, 2023 | Abandonment
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