Hello,
Hope you are well.
It’s Wednesday, midweek. Before you know it, it should be the weekend.
Hope you’re not very busy this weekend or most weekends. Perhaps you have an odd wedding happening this weekend, hmm maybe it’s your wedding ?.
Cheeky me…
Alright, let me head straight into this topic. I remember hearing about abandoned babies so much that the first time I heard about it, I wasn’t even shocked. So, subconsciously who knows how many times I’ve heard about a baby been abandoned in South Africa. Ever since I remember being aware of me and my life in South Africa hearing about abandoned babies made me feel so sorry for them, but not once was I shocked about how they were abandoned.
Okay, I am going to tell you my opinion and intuition about what I think. I honestly believe that there are huge numbers (massive) of “unsafe” abandoned children than of the babies that were/are being abandoned “safely” in South Africa.
I say this purely from the reality. South Africa has issues with poverty; the state doesn’t support young mothers or mothers. South Africa is the number one rape capital in the world; a South African life is worth 0 rands, a pet’s and foreigner’s life is worth -0 rand in South Africa. Documentation of foreigners is a problem, so imagine the unborn child. Domestic violence is an issue as well in South Africa. I discuss most of the above topics in my blog by the way if this is your first time reading this article.
Take a look at this article.
If you go to Google and type in the sentence “abandoned baby found in South Africa,” you will find a string of articles for this year and previous years under the search results.
Check out this video.
https://www.iafrica.com/the-latest-child-abandonment-stats/
Here is an additional article.
South Africa shouldn’t be called South Africa anymore; it should just be called South Savage Africa. This is a country where a child is either murdered or assaulted every hour.
Take a look at this article.
https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/crime-stats-children-charged-in-736-murder-cases-20190912
Illegal immigrants and child abandonment
Illegal immigrants are the most vulnerable as they cannot offer their children documentation to have legal protection and legal rights in South Africa. If the South Africans already don’t get a lot of support from the state, what choice do illegal immigrants really have?
Illegal immigrants will get deported if they do seek help for their children through legal means. Anonymous child abandonment is criminalised, and mothers face charges such as concealment of birth and attempted murder. Along with this, there is an increase in the number of child traffickers in South Africa.
In Spain, illegal immigrants are offered free healthcare.
“Health shouldn’t know borders, identity papers or work permits.” This is the Spanish ethics.
Child abandonment, culture and cultural taboos
In South Africa, superstitions, cultural beliefs and the lack of education is what also contributes to the abandonment of children. Fertility still determines a woman’s value in the tribes and marriage; the price she is worth (Lebola is the term) for marriage.
While some mothers, tribes and community members believe that abandoning a child is better than relinquishing the rights to it; making it easy for adoption.
A lot of these women haven’t had sex education and education around using the birth control options available to them.
Here is an intense article.
What are the issues that abandoned children face?
Children who are abandoned feel that they are not valuable and that they are not important. They never had protection, and someone to love them unconditionally and internalise immense fear purely because physically and emotionally they were never protected.
These children do not know any better unless they are lucky enough to be adopted in loving homes by parents with incredible hearts. They can be found in circumstances that they would not have even known better. Because of the lack of supervision, they are vulnerable to human traffickers, could even be undernourished, and could also find themselves in a situation where they are abused because of their dependency on adults and their environment.
If these kids are not born in a safe and secure environment physically, mentally and emotionally they face emotional abandonment and lose trust.
What is emotional abandonment? (According to Wikipedia) Emotional abandonment is an emotional state in which people feel undesired, left behind, discarded. People experiencing emotional abandonment may feel at a loss, cut off from a crucial source of sustenance that has been withdrawn, either suddenly, or through a process of erosion.
Emotional abandonment also occurs in partnerships, and that is a bit different to being abandoned right from the time you’re born.
Take a look at this article.
This is one more problem added to the list of things South Africa still needs to work on. The truth is that how can you charge a mother or send her to prison if there isn’t enough space in South African prisons?
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-09-04-extent-of-overcrowding-at-sa-prisons-revealed/
South Africa doesn’t have a system that works from the root of the problem to the end, i.e. the solution, and has several additional issues surrounding each stage (phase). There should be a system that has the whole phase of the process and its surrounding issues of each phase practically covered in order for the stages of progress to run smoothly.
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to reevaluate them.
