Tuesday, 17 January 2012

Another baby tossed in toilet

The toilet in which the baby was found

Abandoned and left to die in a most brutal manner, a baby boy was discovered in an outside pit toilet in rural Mzingazi - the second such case in Zululand in as many weeks. But this time the rescue came too late and the infant did not survive. Two weeks ago a newborn girl was abandoned in a pit latrine in eSikhawini, but baby Buhle, as she was subsequently named, managed to survive the ordeal. The mother has been traced and arrested.

In the latest incident, the baby boy was found on Saturday morning after Community Policing Forum member Sharon Mdletshe literally broke open the outside toilet system and dug through the human faeces to reach the child. Mdletshe was notified on Friday morning about a woman who had the remains of afterbirth hanging from her body before being rushed to the Lower Umfolozi War Memorial Hospital. The woman’s grandmother told Mdletshe that on Friday morning her granddaughter woke up feeling sick and went to the toilet outside her house. She returned claiming that she did not know what was wrong with her and needed to go to the clinic. She was then taken to Mbonambi Clinic near her house and examined by the nursing sister on duty. The sister noticed the signs of the woman having given birth and she was immediately transferred to the Lower Umfolozi War Memorial Hospital. Mdletshe became suspicious and she requested that the grandmother show her where Sibiya had been sleeping.

They found a large bloodstain on the sheet and then went to the toilet the woman had used before going to the clinic. There, in the dark they noticed what could have been a little body, and Mdletshe immediately grabbed a shovel and started digging up the pit. With help from James Ntuli (a tribal policeman) and Councillor Mbuyazi of Ward 6, the three managed to dismantle the entire pit toilet and eventually found a little head and a leg sticking out of the faeces. Mdletshe grabbed the child hoping that it would still be alive, but sadly, it wasn’t. ‘I was shocked out of my mind.This is the most horrid death imaginable,’ said Mdletshe. A case has been opened and the woman will be charged once out of hospital.